Top cleric killed in Iraq car bombing

A massive car bomb blew up outside the holiest mosque in Iraq today, killing a top Shiite cleric just moments after he delivered a sermon calling for unity.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim died along with at least 20 other people at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. Dozens were wounded.

Bodies and body parts were pulled from shops opposite the religious shrine that were destroyed by the huge blast. A crater more than three feet deep was blasted out of the road at the front of the mosque.

“I saw al-Hakim walk out of the shrine after his sermon and moments later there was a massive explosion. There were many dead bodies,” said Abdul Amir Jassem, a 40-year-old merchant who was inside the mosque. “He was praying for Iraqi unity.”

There were massive outpourings of grief and anger on the streets as news of al-Hakim’s death spread.

“The people who did this are traitors and bastards. They are not real Iraqis,” said Nagih Salah, a 40-year-old truck driver who was on the opposite side of the shrine when the blast occurred.

Cars near the blast were twisted into hunks of metal. Nearby shops were reduced to piles of smouldering rubble.

The top US official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, denounced the bombing.

“The bombing today in Najaf shows again that the enemies of the new Iraq will stop at nothing.

“Again, they have killed innocent Iraqis. Again, they have violated one of Islam’s most sacred places. Again, by their heinous action, they have shown the evil face of terrorism,” he said.

The leader of Iraqi National Congress and Governing Council Member Ahmad Chalabi blamed the US for failing to provide security.

He said the bombing was the work of Saddam Hussein loyalists who were trying to create sectarian tensions.

He said the attack was the work of the same group that bombed the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on August 19, killing 23 people. But he gave no evidence.

Al-Hakim was the top spiritual leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and had divided his time since the end of the war between the Iranian capital Tehran and Najaf, the holiest Shiite Muslim city in Iraq.

Younger Shiites have conducted an ongoing power struggle with the more traditional Shiite Muslim’s in the Najaf and its surrounding region, conducting a political battle to grab control from the al-Hakim family.

Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, who is not yet 30, and his young followers have sought to replace more traditional factions as the voice of Iraq’s Shiite majority, portraying themselves as the ones doing the most to redress decades of suppression by Sunni Muslims under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

“The winners of the killing are Saddam loyalists and terror group al-Qaida and the losers are the Iraqi people,” said Iranian political analyst Morad Veisi.

Mohsen Hakim, a nephew of the murdered ayatollah and a spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, also blamed Saddam loyalists and he called on Iraq’s occupiers to identify the murderers.

“We want comprehensive investigations by the authorities to identify the murderers. Of course, Saddam loyalists are definitely the prime suspects,” Hakim said.

The latest bombing in Najaf comes a week after a bomb exploded outside the house another of Iraqi’s leading Shiite clerics, killing three guards and injuring 10 other people. The cleric suffered only minor injuries.