An official of Iraq's largest Shi'ite Muslim political movement was killed in Baghdad by gunmen loyal to Saddam Hussein, the group said today.
A representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) said Muhannad al-Hakim was shot dead near his home in Baghdad's Amil district yesterday, following death threats from Saddam backers.
"He had received threats that he would be liquidated, murdered, by the men of the regime," the official said. "They are behind this crime."
The SCIRI official added that in a separate incident an angry crowd in the southern city of Najaf had attacked and murdered Ali al-Zalimi, an official of Saddam's Baath party who had played a role in crushing an uprising by Iraqi Shi'ites following the 1991 Gulf War.
"What happened was that that people surrounded him with guns, and proceeded to shoot and beat him," the official said, identifying the killers only as "residents of Najaf who recognised this criminal".
Political violence has flared among Iraq's Shi'ites, who make up 60 per cent of the population, since the fall of Saddam, whose government killed numerous religious leaders of the community he regarded as a fifth column with ties to Shi'ite Iran.
SCIRI's leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was killed along with about 80 others in August when a car bomb ripped through one of Shi'ism's holiest shrines where he had just led worshippers in prayer.