(9 Dec 2007) SHOTLIST
Hillah, South of Baghdad - 9 December, 2007
1. Wide of funeral with mourners carrying coffin of Iraqi police Brigadier General Qais al-Maamouri, AUDIO: gunfire, chanting
2. Women chanting at funeral procession and beating chests, AUDIO: chanting
3. Police vans leading procession, AUDIO: gunfire
4. Close of coffin being carried
5. Wide of procession from back
6. Wide of van carrying coffin with picture on top of van
7. Wide of van going past with coffin on back, AUDIO: gunfire, sirens
8. Various of police vans going past
9. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Vox pop, local resident, No name given, :
"An explosive device killed the head of police and his bodyguards, then I don't know what happened because it was noisy."
10. Cutaway of picture on wall of dead chief of police, Brigadier General Qais al-Maamouri
11. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Abass al-Jibouri, Police Brigadier General and Commander of Scorpion Force:
"At 1400 today a device exploded in the motorcade of the martyr Brigadier General Qais al-Maamouri, head of the Babel police, in the city centre, at the Jumjima interchange. The incident resulted in his death, and injured his driver and wounded one officer."
12. Wide of sign reading: (Arabic) "Swat Team" - Rapid Deployment Force, Scorpion''
FILE: Date and Location Unknown
13. Various of Al-Maamouri in black police uniform greeting men in crowd
14. Wide of Al-Maamouri posing for a photo with Iraqi children
15. Al-Maamouri talking to little boy
STORYLINE
The funeral was held on Sunday of Brigadier General Qais al-Maamouri, the police chief of Babil province, who was killed earlier by a roadside bomb which struck his convoy.
The attack happened in Babil province's capital of Hillah, about 95 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite province south of Baghdad, killing al-Maamouri and two of his bodyguards.
Abass al-Jibouri, Police Brigadier General and Commander of Scorpion Force, confirmed the death of Al-Maamouri.
"At 1400 today a device exploded in the motorcade of the martyr Brigadier Brigadier General Qais al-Maamouri, head of the Babel police, in the city centre, at the Jumjima interchange. The incident resulted in his death, injuring his driver and wounding one officer," he said.
It was the latest in a series of assassinations against provincial leaders in the mainly Shiite region south of the Iraqi capital, as militias and other factions vye for control of the area with an eye towards the eventual withdrawal of US- led forces.
Local authorities acknowledged militia fighters could be behind the attack, but said the primary suspect was al-Qaida in Iraq, which maintains a strong presence in the northern half of the province that includes towns in the so-called "triangle of death", south of the capital.
Al-Maamouri was politically independent and had a reputation for leading crackdowns against militia fighters.
He is thought to have resisted pressure from religious and political groups to release favoured members from detention.
Police slapped an indefinite curfew on Hillah, where streets quickly emptied of residents amid fears of arrests and clashes in the wake of the killings.
The oil-rich south of Iraq, also home to major pilgrimage sites in the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, has been a focal point for rising tensions between Shiite factions, particularly the Mahdi Army that is nominally loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Badr Brigades, the militant arm of the country's most powerful Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
Clashes between rival Shiite factions have continued since.
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