Gunmen killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shi'ite 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 January 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, 20 kilometers 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, said the official at al-Sistani's office in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf.

Shi'ites make up 60 percent 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 make up 20 percent of the population, fear a loss of the dominance and privilege they enjoyed for decades. Sunni clerics have called for a boycott.

Al-Sistani has urged Iraqis to go out and vote, calling it a religious duty for every man and woman. The cleric is not running himself but is backing the 228 candidates from the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of 16 groups that includes Iraq's largest Shi'ite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Also yesterday, one of the world's leading Sunni clerics in Egypt urged all Iraqis on Wednesday to vote in the coming election.

"Iraq's Sunni and Shi'ite communities should take part," Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, head of Egypt's revered Sunni Muslim Al-Azhar University, said in remarks carried by Egypt's semiofficial Middle East News Agency.

Tantawi, who is appointed by the Egyptian Government, said if Iraqis do not elect a responsible government, "catastrophes will continue taking place in Iraq."

Elsewhere, gunmen opened fire on a minibus picking up a Turkish businessman from a central Baghdad hotel yesterday, killing six Iraqis and kidnapping the Turk, who reportedly ran a construction company that worked with US-led occupation authorities.

The attack took place at 6:30 am (0330 GMT) outside the Bakhan Hotel as a minibus arrived to collect the businessman, identified by police as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu. Six Iraqis on board -- the driver and five employees of the businessman -- were killed, police sources said.

(China Daily January 14, 2005)