DUBAI, Jan 23 (AFP) - The group of Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed it had killed a leading member of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party, in a statement posted on the Internet Sunday.
"Your brothers in the Al-Qaeda organization in the Land of Two Rivers (Iraq) managed to assassinate Salem Jaafar al-Kanani, secretary of the traitor Allawi," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be confirmed.
The director of the political office of Allawi's Iraqi National Accord party told AFP in Baghdad that Kanani, a doctor by trade and a member of the INA's science department, was kidnapped on Wednesday.
Kanani, who was running on Allawi's list of parliament candidates, was grabbed by gunmen after he stepped out of a mini-bus near his home on Palestine street in central Baghdad, said the official, Imad Shibib.
Told about the claim, Shibib said: "It's Zarqawi... they are dirty."
His wife had visited the INA office on Sunday, telling them her husband's kidnappers were asking 100,000 dollars, Shibib said, adding that the party had been arranging to pay the ransom.
Allawi's party has been targeted in the run up to the January 30 elections.
Shibib told AFP on January 11 that 22 INA members had been killed over the previous two months and 44 since Saddam Hussein 's regime collapsed in April 2003.
01/23/2005 16:08 GMT - AFP