Gunmen kill leading Iraq cleric’s aide

GUNMEN killed an aide to Iraq’s most influential Shi’ite cleric and two bodyguards in a drive-by shooting outside a Baghdad mosque yesterday — an attack likely to stoke tensions between the Shi’ite majority and the Sunni minority, officials said.

Elsewhere in the capital, a car bomb exploded near a checkpoint outside offices of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s Islamic Dawa

Party, killing one person and injuring at least four more, officials said. Al-Jaafari was not there at the time.