BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed an aide to Iraq's top Shiite Muslim cleric, intensifying the threat of a violent sectarian split with the approach of national elections that political leaders are struggling to salvage.
Sheik Mahmoud Finjan was walking back from evening prayers Wednesday night near his home in Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, when the gunmen opened fire, according to his colleagues. The fusillade killed him, his son and four men identified as bodyguards.
Finjan was a local representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, who supports the planned Jan. 30 National Assembly elections. Sistani's office confirmed the killing but said little about it Thursday.
In the capital, 10 assailants sprayed gunfire at a minibus picking up a Turkish businessman from a hotel, killing six Iraqis, and then kidnapped the Turk, who reportedly ran a construction company working with Americans.
The gunmen swarmed the bus as it pulled up to the Bakhan Hotel at dawn to pick up the man, identified by police as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu. The gunmen opened fire, killing the bus driver and five of Tanrikulu's employees, police said. The attackers then sped off with their captive.
The cleric's killing was the latest in a series of attacks on Shiite and Sunni clerics that appear to be intended to set the two branches of Islam against each other and could disrupt the balloting.
Sistani, as spiritual guide of much of Iraq's Shiite majority, has urged that the elections be held on schedule. But Iraqi Sunnis, many of whose leaders are wary of seeing the long-repressed Shiites take political power, have pressed for a delay because continuing violence in Sunni-populated areas will likely keep voters away from the polls and further increase the Shiites' electoral gains.
Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26-million people and are expected to dominate the 275-member National Assembly. Many Sunnis, who make up 20 percent of the population, fear a loss of the influence and privilege they enjoyed for decades. And Sunni clerics have called for a boycott to protest the November assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
U.S. and Iraqi officials fear that a low Sunni turnout will cast doubts on the new government's legitimacy.
Sistani has urged Iraqis to vote, calling it a religious duty for every man and woman. The Iranian-born 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 Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Thursday that Iraqis' participation in the vote could help end the violence.
American and Iraqi officials have said they expected violence to surge before the elections, and the military has increased operations. The American military said Thursday that it had rounded up at least 59 men since Tuesday suspected in attacks. Most of the detentions were in the north-central Sunni heartland and in Mosul. Two suspects were detained in Baghdad, the military said.
Special arrangements are being made for voting in the Sunni towns of Ramadi, Fallujah and Mosul. A spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, Farid Ayar, told reporters Thursday that residents of Fallujah would vote in stations set up near the places where they have been living since fleeing the American offensive in November.
In Mosul, half of the city is still considered unstable, but voters would be expected to travel to the safer areas where the election is taking place, he said. Polling stations will soon be set up in Ramadi, he added.
Information from the Washington Post, Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.
