"Masked gunmen have been stalking Shiite doctors, lawyers and college professors. On Jan. 6, a suicide bomber tried to enter a school filled with several hundred students in a Shiite-dominated area in the northwest but was stopped by a ninth-grader, who is being hailed as a national hero after he died when the bomb went off in the ensuing scuffle. Other religious minorities, including Sufi Muslims, are facing lethal assaults."