top Shiite cleric in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) — 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.
With the killing, insurgents trying to derail Iraq's Jan. 30 elections appear to be sending a message to al-Sistani, who strongly supports the vote. Insurgents have targeted electoral workers and candidates.
Sheik Mahmoud Finjan, al-Sistani's representative in the town of Salman Pak, 12 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. His son and four bodyguards were also killed, the official at al-Sistani's office in this Shiite holy city said.
Shiites make 60% 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% of the population, fear a loss of the dominance and privelage they enjoyed for decades.
Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus picking up a Turkish businessman from a central Baghdad hotel on Thursday, killing six Iraqis and kidnapping the Turk, who reportedly ran a construction company that worked with U.S.-led occupation authorities.
The attack took place at 6:30 a.m. outside the Bakhan Hotel as a minibus arrived to collect a Turkish businessman, identified by police as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu. Six Iraqis on board — the driver and five employees of the businessman — were killed, police Lt. Bassam al-Abed said.
The gunmen abducted Tanrikulu, leaving the pavement in front of the hotel stained with blood. 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.
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 sabotage attack, an official with the North Oil Co. said Thursday.
The official said pumping to the refinery resumed two hours before Beiji's reserves would have run out. Since the Dec. 23 attack, the refinery has depended on reserves usually kept to be used during wars, the official said on condition of anonymity. Between 300,000 and 400,000 barrels a day will be pumped to the refinery, he said.
Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.
In other violence Thursday, gunmen shot dead 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 on condition of anonymity.
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.
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 armoured 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 Washington, the White House said the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has concluded without finding any evidence of the banned weapons that U.S. President George Bush cited as justification for going to war against Iraq.
The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two years searching military installations, factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday there no longer is an active search for weapons. "There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that," but it has largely concluded, he said.
In France, President Jacques Chirac was holding talks Thursday with the interim president of Iraq in a bid to develop a dialogue with Iraqi authorities as elections in the violence-wracked country draw near.
Chirac and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, on a three day visit to France, were meeting for talks followed by lunch. The visit provides the occasion "to underscore at the highest level the determination of France to develop a dialogue with Iraqi authorities," the Foreign Ministry said earlier this week.
BAGHDAD (AP) — 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.
With the killing, insurgents trying to derail Iraq's Jan. 30 elections appear to be sending a message to al-Sistani, who strongly supports the vote. Insurgents have targeted electoral workers and candidates.
Sheik Mahmoud Finjan, al-Sistani's representative in the town of Salman Pak, 12 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. His son and four bodyguards were also killed, the official at al-Sistani's office in this Shiite holy city said.
Shiites make 60% 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% of the population, fear a loss of the dominance and privelage they enjoyed for decades.
Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus picking up a Turkish businessman from a central Baghdad hotel on Thursday, killing six Iraqis and kidnapping the Turk, who reportedly ran a construction company that worked with U.S.-led occupation authorities.
The attack took place at 6:30 a.m. outside the Bakhan Hotel as a minibus arrived to collect a Turkish businessman, identified by police as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu. Six Iraqis on board — the driver and five employees of the businessman — were killed, police Lt. Bassam al-Abed said.
The gunmen abducted Tanrikulu, leaving the pavement in front of the hotel stained with blood. 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.
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 sabotage attack, an official with the North Oil Co. said Thursday.
The official said pumping to the refinery resumed two hours before Beiji's reserves would have run out. Since the Dec. 23 attack, the refinery has depended on reserves usually kept to be used during wars, the official said on condition of anonymity. Between 300,000 and 400,000 barrels a day will be pumped to the refinery, he said.
Insurgents have often targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, repeatedly cutting exports and denying the country much-needed reconstruction money.
In other violence Thursday, gunmen shot dead 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 on condition of anonymity.
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.
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 armoured 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 Washington, the White House said the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has concluded without finding any evidence of the banned weapons that U.S. President George Bush cited as justification for going to war against Iraq.
The Iraq Survey Group, made up of some 1,200 military and intelligence specialists and support staff, spent nearly two years searching military installations, factories and laboratories whose equipment and products might be converted quickly to making weapons.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday there no longer is an active search for weapons. "There may be a couple, a few people, that are focused on that," but it has largely concluded, he said.
In France, President Jacques Chirac was holding talks Thursday with the interim president of Iraq in a bid to develop a dialogue with Iraqi authorities as elections in the violence-wracked country draw near.
Chirac and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, on a three day visit to France, were meeting for talks followed by lunch. The visit provides the occasion "to underscore at the highest level the determination of France to develop a dialogue with Iraqi authorities," the Foreign Ministry said earlier this week.
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