Safaa al Mashhadani, a Sunni Iraqi parliamentary candidate who served on the Baghdad Provincial Council, was killed by a car bomb, The National reported on October 15. Mashhadani, a candidate for one of the 329 seats in Iraq’s parliament, was running in the national elections scheduled for November 11. He was killed in Tarmiya, a town 30 miles north of Baghdad in Salah al Din Governorate.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) condemned the attack and called “on the Iraqi authorities to carry out a thorough and transparent investigation to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani has said there will be an investigation.
Iraqi Speaker of Parliament Mahmoud al Mashhadani called the attack “a cowardly terrorist act that sought to undermine the men of stance and principle.” It was not clear if Mahmoud is closely related to the victim, who shares the same last name, though both men are members of the same political party. “Tarmiya has lost one of its loyal, virtuous sons who dedicated himself to serving the people, and sincerely and faithfully sought to uphold the values of justice and patriotism,” Mahmoud al Mashhadani said.
Safaa al Mashhadani is the first candidate to be killed before the elections. “The bomb had been placed under a car, a technique often used by militant groups in Iraq in the past,” a security official told The National. Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias have been blamed in the past for assassinations of high-profile Sunni figures in Iraq. For instance, in 2020, Hisham al Hashimi, a historian and researcher who criticized Shiite militias, was killed in an attack blamed on Kataib Hezbollah. Kataib Hezbollah also kidnapped Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov in Baghdad in March 2023. Tsurkov was released in September 2025.
Safaa al Mashhadani was a candidate for the Sovereignty (Siyada) Alliance, Al Arabiya noted, which “is running in elections in a number of governorates, most notably Baghdad, Kirkuk, Diyala, Salah al-Din, Nineveh, and Anbar.” The party “is a key Sunni political bloc in the Iraqi parliament and plays an influential role in Iraq’s national politics,” Turkey’s Daily Sabah reported in April. It is led by Khamis al Khanjar, an Iraqi businessman who is also active in the Azem political bloc. Khanjar and Mahmoud al Mashhadani have been political opponents of the previous Parliament Speaker Mohammed al Halboosi.
Khanjar condemned the attack as “terrorism.” Kurdistan24, a Kurdish broadcast news channel in the autonomous region of northern Iraq, noted that Safaa al Mashhadani’s “popularity, particularly among young voters and Sunni communities, made him a key vote-winner for the alliance led by Khamis al-Khanjar, and he was known for his strong stances and fiery remarks against Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq and their interference in politics and government affairs.” The report said that the attack has “hallmarks of a targeted political elimination, aimed at weakening the Sunni front before the elections.”
The UAE’s Al Ain noted on October 16 that “while accounts of the crime’s motives vary, ranging from political to criminal, analysts agree that the incident highlights the fragility of the electoral landscape and the widening trust gap in an election season that is becoming increasingly tense by the day.” The report quoted political analyst Doctor Ghazi al Faisal, who said, “The killing of Al Mashhadani represents a dangerous phenomenon that adds to the series of crises plaguing the Iraqi political system.” Faisal also argued that “this unjustified crime could lead to confrontations and an escalation of violence between political forces if the judiciary does not act swiftly and decisively to achieve justice and redress for the victim.”
