Gunmen kill aide to Iraq's most influential cleric

Gunmen killed an aide to Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric and two bodyguards in a drive-by shooting outside a Baghdad mosque today – an attack likely to stoke tensions between the Shiite 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, party official Ayad al-Nedawi said.

Shiite cleric Kamal Ezz al-Deen al-Ghuraifi, an aide to leading Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was shot as he was about to leave al-Doreen mosque after leading prayers, according to his son, Hamid Kamal.

Two bodyguards were killed and another four were wounded.

Al-Ghuraifi, in his 60s, had been a Baghdad representative of al-Sistani for the past decade, said Amer al-Hussaini, a friend of al-Ghuraifi’s and a member of al-Hawza al-Ilmiyah, the Shiites’ ancient seminary in the southern city of Najaf.

It was the third attack on al-Sistani aides in recent weeks.

Last week, gunmen killed Samir al-Baghdadi, who represented al-Sistani in Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite al-Amin district. In May, attackers assassinated Shiite cleric Mohammed Tahir al-Allaq, al-Sistani’s representative in the Jurf al-Nadaf area near Madain, about 14 miles south-east of Baghdad.

“These attacks are aimed at stoking sectarian tensions between Iraqis,” al-Hussaini said.

Separately, five masked gunmen stormed a Sunni mosque in the same neighbourhood and kidnapped an imam, Sheik Amer al-Tikriti, during Friday prayers, police 1st Lt Mohammed al-Hiyani said.

A Sunni-dominated insurgency has killed about 1,380 people – mostly civilians and Iraqi forces – since al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-dominated government April 28.

Islamic extremists, such as Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al Qaida in Iraq group, are determined to start a civil war by attacking Iraqi security forces and members of the country’s Shiite majority.

In the attack on the Islamic Dawa Party offices in Baghdad’s Mansour neighbourhood, the suicide bomber detonated the car near a checkpoint about 25 metres from the building, which used to be al-Jaafari’s house.

Interior Ministry administrative affairs undersecretary police Maj Gen Adnan al-Assadi had left the building about a half-hour earlier, al-Nedawi said. It was not clear if he was the target.

A neighbour was killed and four armed guards for the compound were wounded, al-Nedawi said. Following the blast, US troops blocked roads leading to the offices.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb targeting a US Marine convoy in the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi instead killed two civilians and wounded two others. Ramadi is an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad.

Another roadside bomb missed a US military convoy in the New Baghdad district but killed a civilian and wounded three others.

A police patrol struck a roadside bomb at a checkpoint on Baghdad’s outskirts, wounding two policemen, 1st Lt Mohammed al-Hayali said.

A fire at a power station that supplies a Baghdad waterworks shut down the facility, leaving millions of people without drinking water, officials said.

The blaze came a day after Baghdad’s mayor decried the capital’s crumbling infrastructure and the lack of clean water and threatened to resign if the Iraqi government did not provide more money.

The fire halted all distribution from the Karkh water station in Tarmiyah, which serves northern and western Baghdad, and repairs could take at least three days, said Jassim Mohammed, the project’s director.

While Mohammed said he believed a bomb started the fire, a municipal official said the blaze was still under investigation.

While militants frequently target infrastructure, loud explosions can occur when a transformer blows.

Iraqi engineers told the US military the fire resulted from a blown transformer and not an insurgent attack, said Sgt 1st Class David Abrams, a spokesman for Task Force Baghdad.

“We verified with engineers on the site that it was a blown transformer,” Abrams said.

Efforts to expand Baghdad’s water supplies were set back in June when insurgents sabotaged a pipeline near Baghdad.

Mayor Alaa Mahmoud al-Timimi’s threat to resign over the dismal state of the capital’s infrastructure was an indication of the daily misery that Baghdad’s 6.45 million people still endure more than two years after the US-led invasion. They are wracked not only by unrelenting bombings and kidnappings but serious shortages of water, electricity and fuel.

“It’s useless for any official to stay in office without the means to accomplish his job,” al-Timimi said Thursday.