Police kill Kurdish politician in Iraq

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police fatally shot a Kurdish politician yesterday in one of Iraq's most volatile provinces, a killing that underlines the growing tensions between Kurds and Arabs in parts of the north.

Even as Iraq has seen a sharp decline in Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence, hostility is deepening between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq's north as Kurdish authorities begin to exert more authority beyond the boundaries of their autonomous region.

Riya Qahtan, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, was killed in Jalula, a small town 80 miles northeast of Baghdad in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala, said Jabar Yawer, a spokesman for the Kurdish military. Jalula has a mostly Sunni Arab population with a substantial Kurdish minority.

The shooting occurred after two Sunni Arab police officers stopped three members of the Kurdish secret service at a market and demanded they show identification. They refused, and within minutes police reinforcements arrived, arrested them, and took them to police headquarters, Yawer said.

Qahtan then went to the police station and persuaded officers to release the detainees, who had been working as guards for his party. But as the group was leaving, two police opened fire and shot Qahtan, Yawer added.

Also yesterday, the U.S. military arrested five suspected Iranian-backed Shiite extremists accused in rocket attacks on Iraqi and American forces.

The military said it captured the five suspects in three locations in a largely Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, acting on intelligence information.