IRAQ: Shots in the Street

Only a few weeks before, Iraq’s Premier Abdel Karim Kassem had been the nation’s idol, but now the mention of his name drew sneers as well as applause from Baghdad crowds. As his tan Chevrolet station wagon rolled past the coffee shops on teeming Rashid Street, some coffee drinkers propped their legs on the café tables to show Kassem the soles of their feet—an Arab gesture of contempt. Demonstrators protesting last month’s execution of 13 popular Iraqi army officers (TIME, Sept. 28) even dared to chant: “Allah is great, Kassem is crazy.” In the sultry heat of Baghdad, many an old Mideast hand could smell trouble.

It came one evening last week with the suddenness of lightning as Kassem’s car took him along the accustomed route through Rashid Street. As usual, little knots of surprised pedestrians stopped to wave or cheer, and some trotted in the dusty street hoping for a peek at the “sole leader.” Then, from the sidewalk, a small group of grim men stepped toward the car and opened fire with a deafening clatter. A youth broke out of the startled crowd to hurl himself in front of Kassem as a shield, and a taxi driver rammed his cab between Kassem’s station wagon and the gunmen. But it was too late; Kassem’s driver lay dead, and the Premier himself was reeling and bloodied, his hand ripped by one submachine gun slug, his arm shattered by two more. He had escaped death by inches.

The Swarthy One. Before the dust settled, the assailants had melted into the crowd and vanished with a practiced finesse that befitted their leader, a swarthy professional assassin who has been killing for hire for more than 20 years. A shadowy Palestinian once employed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Kassem’s would-be killer, who is well known to the police, counts among his coups the shooting of an Arab sheik who had agreed to sell land to Jews and the murder of a British official on the steps of a church in Nazareth. Barred from several Arab countries including Iraq, he reportedly slipped in from Syria as scores of other terrorists have been doing in recent months, and just as efficiently made his getaway.

In Cairo, Gamal Abdel Nasser was quick to raise his hands in horror at the news of the attack on Kassem (“I am against all this terror and killing”), but many guessed that he was just making a show of propriety. The United Arab Republic’s campaign to topple Kassem has reached a screaming crescendo; fortnight ago Syria’s tough Interior Minister, Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj, presided at a clandestine meeting in the Syrian town of El Haseke with anti-Kassem Iraqi army officers to discuss plans for Iraq’s leadership should Kassem be overthrown. When the meeting was over, Serraj flew off to Cairo immediately to report to Nasser.

Curse of Allah. Cairo’s Al Akhbar predicted that “Iraq is on the threshold of new massacres in which Kassem and the Communists will rid themselves of all nationalist elements,” and, for once, its charges may have solid foundation. As thousands gathered outside the hospital where Kassem was recuperating, the “sole leader” spoke to the nation from his bed: “The curse of Allah will be on the traitors and the unjust who are seeking personal gain and serving the interests of imperialism . . .” With this guidance, Ittihad al Shaab, mouthpiece of Iraq’s Communists, promptly pointed the finger of blame at “American and British imperialists . . . and the United Arab Republic.”

First results of the shooting were the arrest of hundreds of Iraqis, the establishment of military and police blockades throughout Baghdad and the imposition of a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the city. Airline flights were canceled and international telephone and telegraph connections cut as the search for the gunmen continued. From Peking, Colonel Fadhil Mahdawi, the hated, Red-lining head of Baghdad’s notorious People’s Court, announced that he was returning home immediately—another indication that a new wave of executions could be expected.

All this could only weaken further the crumbling foundations of Kassem’s strength. Already, some of the army’s senior officers have turned against Kassem, and most moderate political elements have also joined the opposition. Virtually the only organized support left to Kassem comes from the Communists, who hope to pick up the pieces when and if he falls.