Iraq poll fears deepen as 2 Sistani aides killed
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-13 20:37

Two aides to Iraq's top Shi'ite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have been killed in separate attacks, a Sistani representative said on Thursday, deepening fears of sectarian bloodshed ahead of Jan. 30 elections.

U.S. troops have arrested six suspects in the assassination of Baghdad's provincial governor, the highest-ranking official hit so far in attacks to sabotage a Jan. 30 election, the U.S. military said on January 12, 2005. [Reuters]

Cleric Mahmoud al-Madaen, Sistani's representative in the ancient town of Salman Pak south of Baghdad, was killed on Wednesday along with his son and four bodyguards.

Another aide, a cleric working in Sistani's office in Najaf, was also found dead on Wednesday. He was not named.

Iraqi officials say a series of attacks on Shi'ite targets in Iraq show that Sunni Muslim insurgents are mounting a campaign to inflame sectarian distrust, which has already been stoked by divisions over the elections.

Iraq's 60 percent Shi'ite majority, oppressed for decades under Saddam Hussein, strongly supports the elections. A list of mainly Shi'ite candidates drawn up with Sistani's approval is expected to dominate the polls.

But a raging insurgency in Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland means many there are too afraid to vote and election preparations are far behind schedule.

Several leading Sunni parties say they are boycotting the vote because the results will be unfairly skewed against the Sunni minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam.

Sunni leaders say that if many Sunnis regard the elections as unfair, this will spark more bloodshed and even civil war.

The reclusive Sistani, Iraq's most widely revered religious leader, commands enormous influence in the country. Sistani has appealed for restraint from Shi'ites, saying acts of revenge would destroy the country.

SHI'ITES UNDER ATTACK

On Dec. 27, a suicide car bomber killed 13 people outside the Baghdad offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a major Shi'ite political party whose leader heads the main list of Shi'ite election candidates.

A week earlier, twin suicide car bombings in the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala killed nearly 70 people.

Insurgents have also repeatedly targeted Iraqi police and security forces in the run-up to the elections, killing scores since the start of the month.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have conceded that some areas of the country are still too unsafe for voting to take place there.

But Washington insists that the elections should go ahead on time, saying that delaying the vote would be a victory for the insurgents, and that imperfect polls are better than none.

"We want to make sure that there is as broad participation as possible in those elections. I think we all recognize that the election is not going to be perfect," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Wednesday.

American officials also said on Wednesday that the U.S. force that scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction -- cited by President Bush as justification for war -- had abandoned the hunt.

The 1,700-strong Iraq Survey Group, responsible for the hunt, last month wrapped up physical searches for weapons of mass destruction, and will now gather information to help U.S. forces tackle insurgents, officials said.

In renewed violence in Baghdad on Thursday, gunmen seized a Turkish businessmen outside a hotel and killed six Iraqis believed to be his guards, police and witnesses said.

Scores of foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the past year. Some have been released -- often following the payment of ransoms -- but several have been killed by militant groups. A female French journalist has been missing for a week.

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