Top Iraqi Shiite cleric’s aide killed as Turkish businessman kidnapped

BAGHDAD – AFP
An aide to Iraq’s top Shiite cleric has been murdered barely a fortnight before elections the Shiites are tipped to win, while gunmen seized a Turkish businessman and killed seven Iraqis outside a Baghdad hotel.

As the country prepared for its first free and fair polls in half a century despite the relentess bloodshed across the country, US-led forces stepped up operations against insurgents, rounding up almost 50 suspects.
Washington said it had wrapped up a fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction, which was the main justification for the March 2003 war against Saddam Hussein’s old regime.

An aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, his son and four bodyguards were murdered Wednesday night after they left prayers in the lawless Sunni-majority town of Salman Pak, southeast of the capital, an official at Sistani’s office in the holy city of Najaf said Thursday.

Sheikh Mahmud al-Madahaini had been the target of several threats and attempted assassinations in the past, the official added.
Salman Pak lies on the highway linking the capital with Kut, further to the southeast. It is a lawless area where armed men hijack trucks and carry out kidnappings.

Sistani, the spiritual leader of the country’s majority Shiites, is not running for office but has emerged as the kingmaker after he blessed the United Iraqi Alliance, a grouping of political and religious parties.

A Turkish businessman was meanwhile kidnapped outside his central Baghdad hotel by men who machine-gunned a mini-van of his employees who had comed to collect him, killing all seven, a hotel employee said Thursday.

“At 6:00 am (0300 GMT), like every morning, seven employees of the (Turkish construction company) arrived to pick up their boss, a Turk named Abdel Kader Tam,” the source said.
“Today, 10 armed men in two cars were waiting for them. They machine-gunned the bus, killing all seven occupants, and kidnapped the Turk.”

US and Iraqi forces were continuing to crack down on rebels in a bid to thwart attacks in the run-up to the January 30 vote that they insist will go ahead despite the deadly insurgency.
The US military said Thursday nearly 50 people have been detained in joint raids overnight, many of them in Bajawan, near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

“The purpose was to kill or capture 17 known anti-Iraqi force members. The 17 wanted AIF members were captured along with 14 others,” it said in a statement, adding that the raid also netted weapons and money.

In Dhuluiya, near Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit north of Baghdad, nine people were arrested. Another eight were rounded up in various operations around Baghdad and north of the capital that also uncovered weapons and explosives.

The unrelenting dose of daily car bombs and assassinations has forced a hard reality check on the White House and US-backed interim government.
Asked if he agreed with Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that violence will make voting impossible in some areas of the war-torn country, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday: “We all recognize that the election is not going to be perfect.”
“This is the first time Iraqis will be able to freely choose their leaders. It’s for a transitional government, and it’s one of three elections that will take place over the course of this year,” he said.

“And so we’re going to do everything we can to help the Iraqi people and the interim government ensure as broad a participation as possible in this upcoming election,” said McClellan.

The resistance movement has been fanned in part by widespread concern among the Sunni Arab elite, which dominated Saddam’s regime and all previous Iraqi governments, that the new parliament will be dominated by the long-oppressed Shiite majority.

The elections are expected to be the focus of talks in Paris between Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar and French President Jacques Chirac also aimed at repairing strained ties.

Meanwhile, McClellan confirmed Washington‘s hunt for Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction has ended and that an interim report by top US arms inspector Charles Duelfer saying there are no weapons to be found will likely stand.

A report by Duelfer’s Iraq Survey group, which is to be released in the coming weeks, will resemble a September draft in which the inspector said there were no such arms, the spokesman said.
The report contradicted one of US President George W. Bush’s chief reasons for the war that led to the toppling of Saddam in April 2003 and ushered in the current era of chaos.

Bush told ABC television the invasion of Iraq was “absolutely” worth it, even though no suspect weapons have been found.
In other violence across the country, a Turkish truck driver was gunned down by assailants Thursday near the rebel bastion of Samarra in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad, police said.

An Iraqi truck driver was killed when gunmen opened fire on a convoy being escored by US troops near Samarra, north of Baghdad, police said.
And a Communist member of the Diyala provincial council was shot dead near Baquba, his family said. Muwayad Sami was the third Iraqi communist to be murdered in the past two weeks.

In other violence, saboteurs overnight blew up a pipeline linking oilfields near Kirkuk and the Dora refinery, near Samarra, northeast of the capital, police said.

An official of the Northern Oil Co in Kirkuk said oil flow through the pipeline had been halted so that the fire could be extinguished.

13-1-2005

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