BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi journalist Wednesday challenged government denials that 11 of his relatives were slaughtered in their Baghdad home, urging authorities to show that his claim was false by letting "all my family appear on television."
Dhia al-Kawaz, editor of the Jordan-based Aswat al-Iraq news agency, had said masked gunmen stormed the family home and killed two of his sisters, their husbands and their seven children as they ate breakfast. Al-Kawaz himself has lived outside Iraq for 20 years.
The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the attack and claimed Iraqi police at a nearby checkpoint failed to intervene.
The Iraqi government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, insisted that the deaths — which reportedly occurred Sunday in the Shiite militia infiltrated neighborhood of Shaab, never took place. Al-Kawaz's agency is widely identified with Saddam Hussein's illegal Baath Party.
"I have spoken with the mother of al-Kawaz and she categorically denies that the family has been liquidated," al-Dabbagh said at a news conference. Iraqi state television also said al-Kawaz's mother reported by telephone that the family was fine and said she had disowned her son for his false claims.
But al-Kawaz responded by appearing on Al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations to issue his challenge.
"I ask the spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh to let all of my family appear on TV," al-Kawaz told Al-Jazeera television.
Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told Sharqiyah television that his department had no record of the deaths and "the morgue they didn't receive bodies from one family."
"I don't know what the purpose of creating such issue is," he said. "The Interior Ministry doesn't conceal such information."
Efforts by The Associated Press to independently confirm or refute the report have not been successful. The Shaab neighborhood is among the most dangerous in Baghdad, and many Iraqi journalists fear asking too many questions there.
