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Representative of Top Iraq Cleric Killed

Posted on: Thursday, 13 January 2005, 09:00 CST

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric, along with the aide's son and four bodyguards in a town south of Baghdad, an official in the cleric's office said Thursday.

Insurgents trying to derail Iraq's Jan. 30 elections appeared to be sending a message to al-Sistani, who strongly supports the vote. Insurgents have targeted electoral workers and candidates.

Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus picking up a Turkish businessman from the Bakhan Hotel in central Baghdad on Thursday, killing six Iraqis and kidnapping the Turk, who reportedly ran a construction company that worked with U.S.-led occupation authorities.

Sheik Mahmoud Finjan, al-Sistani's representative in the town of Salman Pak, 10 miles southeast of Baghdad, was shot dead Wednesday night as he was returning home from a mosque where he performed the evening prayers, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The aide's son and four bodyguards also were killed, the official said at al-Sistani's office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and are expected to dominate the 275-member National Assembly in the first free elections held in Iraq since it became independent in 1932. Some Sunnis, who are 20 percent of the population, fear a loss of the dominance and privilege they enjoyed for decades. Sunni clerics have called for a boycott.

Al-Sistani has urged Iraqis to vote, calling it a religious duty for every man and woman. The cleric is not running himself but is backing the 228 candidates from the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of 16 groups that includes Iraq's largest Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

If many Sunnis do boycott the vote, the United Iraqi Alliance stands to dominate the assembly, whose main job will be to write a permanent constitution.

The Turkish businessman, identified by police as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu, was abducted and the pavement in front of the hotel was stained with blood. Six Iraqis on board - the driver and five employees of the businessman - were killed, police Lt. Bassam al-Abed said.

A Turkish news channel said the construction company was working in Iraq with Americans. A hotel employee who gave only his first name, Alaa, said he had been in Iraq for about a year.

Insurgents have routinely targeted Iraqis and foreigners working with the U.S.-led coalition.

Iraqi Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib also met police chiefs from around the country on Thursday to discuss security for this month's election.

"I would like to assure the Iraqi people that we will protect every citizen who will come forward to vote in the elections," al-Naqib said before the meeting, which was closed to the press.

Meanwhile, oil resumed flowing through a major pipeline linking Kirkuk's oil fields with the northern refinery of Beiji following a three-week stoppage caused by a Dec. 23 sabotage attack, an official with the North Oil Co. said Thursday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said pumping to the refinery resumed two hours before Beiji's reserves would have run out. Insurgents often have targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.

In other violence Thursday, gunmen shot to death a member of the Diyala province's local council in the city of Baqoubah, northeast of Baghdad. Mouayad Sami was slain in front of his house, a doctor at the Baqoubah General Hospital said.

Hours earlier in Baqoubah, a roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi police patrol was passing, killing a police officer and wounding six others, police Lt. Hussein Jasim said.

Gunmen also killed Iraqi National Guard Capt. Hamed Hassan Salman in a market in the western city of Qaim, near the border with Syria, witnesses said.

In the capital, U.S. forces searching for those behind the assassination this month of Baghdad's provincial governor raided a mosque and detained two more suspects, the military said Thursday.

Wednesday's raid on Al Khashab mosque followed one a day earlier on a house in the city's northern Hurriyah neighborhood in which six suspects were detained.

The governor, Ali al-Haidari, was killed on Jan. 4 when gunmen fired on his armored BMW. The attack also killed six of his bodyguards.

Residents reported seeing insurgents fleeing inside the mosque after the shooting and said weapons had been stockpiled there, the military said in a statement.

In Paris, President Jacques Chirac was holding talks Thursday with Iraq's interim President Ghazi al-Yawer to promote dialogue between the two countries ahead of the elections and to underscore France's support for the transition process.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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