Aide to Iraq spiritual leader killed
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-02 10:45

BAGHDAD - A top aide to Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader was among at least 20 people killed in attacks across the country, including a bombing near an office of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's party, the defense ministry said.

An Iraqi mourns his relative who was killed in a suicide car bomb that exploded near an office of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Dawa Party in Baghdad. [AFP]

The unrest followed the release of figures showing that Iraqi deaths from insurgent attacks had fallen in June by more than one-third compared to May, one of the bloodiest months since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003.

A senior advisor to Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Sheikh Kamaleddin al-Ghuraifi, was shot dead with two others in Baghdad on his way to Friday prayers, the defense ministry and Sistani's office said.

A US official warned of the "real" threat of sectarian strife in Iraq after al-Ghuraifi was killed.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, also warned that the US embassy in Baghdad is constantly approached by purported insurgent intermediaries but has never "knowingly" met with armed groups.

"We have not knowingly met with insurgents. ... We have met plenty of people sent by insurgents x, y and z, but we have not negotiated through these people with insurgents," said the official.

"We deliver a simple message: stop the violence, otherwise our forces will take you out."

The US official said these intermediaries are usually Sunni Arab academics, business people, tribal sheikhs and mid-level former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath parties.

The US official said these intermediary approaches shot up by almost "100 percent" since the January election.

"The election created doubts among insurgents," he said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Sunday that US officials had held talks with insurgent groups and said such contacts "happen all the time."

His remarks led Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to distance his government from such actions, saying: "The Iraqi government has nothing to do with the negotiations with insurgents."

On Friday, a suicide car bomber also blew himself up near an office of Jaafari's Islamic Dawa Party in western Baghdad, killing one and wounding another.

In central Baghdad, five gunmen also stormed into a Sunni Muslim mosque and kidnapped Sheikh Amer al-Tikriti during Friday prayers, a defense ministry source reported.

Other attacks in Baghdad and in and around the restive city of Samarra further north killed 14 police and soldiers and wounded at least 15, police and army sources said.

A TV anchorman was abducted and found dead west of Mosul and a civil servant was killed in a drive-by shooting in eastern Baghdad.

In Washington, Zalmay Khalilzad, 54, the new US ambassador to Iraq, was hospitalized with a respiratory illness.

Khalilzad was taken to an undisclosed hospital on Thursday, the day he was due to be formally sworn in, a State Department spokeswoman said.

Residents in western Baghdad found themselves without water for the second time in two weeks after insurgents sabotaged pumps feeding a purification plant, the interior ministry said as temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Farenheit).

In June, a total of 430 Iraqis were killed and 933 wounded, according to data provided by the Iraqi ministries of defense, health and the interior.

The toll was down by 36 percent from 672 in May, which witnessed a surge in attacks following the formation of Iraq's first democratically-elected government in half a century under Jaafari.

More than 10,000 civilians have been killed since the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis a year ago, according to the independent Iraq Body Count website.

US casualties in June came to 77 dead, Pentagon figures showed, bringing to 1,731 the number of soldiers who have lost their lives since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

US and Iraqi forces have launched a series of sweeping raids against rebels including Operation Lightning in and around Baghdad in late May, an offensive aimed at rooting out insurgents in the capital.

Air Force Brigadier General Donald Alston, the chief US military spokesman, declined to give the precise number of car bombings before and after Operation Lighting took effect.

But, he said "in the 25 days after Al Barq (Operation Lightning) the number was less than half."

In the latest counter-insurgency operation in the restive Al-Anbar province, US and Iraqi forces were "focusing on clearing insurgents and foreign fighters from the city of Hit," a US military statement said. Thirteen suspects were arrested.

US and Iraqi officials say diehard Saddam loyalists and militant foreign fighters brought in by the Al-Qaeda network are fueling the insurgency.

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