Two Iraqi Regional Officials Resign Amid Death Threats

BASRA, Iraq, July 23 (AFP) - Two officials from Iraq's main southern governorate resigned on Friday in the face of death threats, three days after one of their colleagues was killed.
Majed Hilal Tamimi, head of the regional reconstruction committee in Basra, said he and Saleh Ismail Najm had stepped down because the governorate's 48-member council had been threatened with death.
The decision to go was also "a protest" against the killing of Hazem al-Ainachi, gunned down as he left home on Tuesday alongside two of his bodyguards, he said.
Tamimi said the death threats were intended to destabilise the selection process for a new governor for Basra, Iraq's second city, following the appointment of Wael Abdel Latif to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's interim government on June 1.