BAGHDAD — Masked gunmen stormed the family home of a journalist associated with Saddam Hussein’s party and critical of the Iraqi government, killing 11 relatives as they ate breakfast in a neighborhood known as a Shiite militia stronghold, colleagues said Monday.
Dhia al-Kawaz, editor of the Jordan-based Asawat al-Iraq news agency, was in Jordan when his sisters, their husbands and children were reportedly killed Sunday in Baghdad’s Shaab district.
According to the news agency’s Web site, witnesses said more than five men broke into the home and opened fire, then planted a bomb inside.
The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said Iraqi police at a nearby checkpoint failed to intervene as the family — al-Kawaz’s sisters; their husbands; and their seven children, ages 5 to 10 — was slaughtered. Al-Kawaz, his wife and their children live elsewhere.
A colleague said al-Kawaz has received threats for his stance against the U.S. occupation and sectarian strife in Iraq; the journalist also is known as an advocate for Hussein’s banned Baath Party. The colleague refused to say whether al-Kawaz was Sunni or Shiite.
Separately, Iraqi soldiers thwarted male terrorism suspects disguised as a bride and groom trying to pass through a checkpoint along with their “wedding procession” north of the Iraqi capital, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.
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