Gunmen shot six Iraqis dead and kidnapped a Turkish businessman outside a hotel in central Baghdad on Thursday, police said. The incident reported at 6:30 a.m. when armed men opened fire on a minibus that came to pick up the businessman from the Bakhan Hotel, killing all six on board, police Lt. Bassam al-Abed said.

The Turkish businessman, who the police officer identified as Abdulkadir Tanrikulu, was kidnapped by at least 10 gunmen.

Five of the dead were local Iraqi employees working for the businessman, who runs a construction company, al-Abed said, according to The AP. The other victim was the driver of the minibus, he said.

The assailants carried the bodies off the bus and drove off in the vehicle and two other cars, al-Abed said.

South of Baghdad, gunmen killed a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim cleric, along with the aide's son and four bodyguards, an official in the cleric's office said Thursday. Sheikh Mahmoud Finjan, al-Sistani's representative in the town of Salman Pak, 16 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 told The AP.

In other violence Thursday, gunmen killed a member of the Diyala province's local council in the city of Baqoubah, northeast of Baghdad. Mouayad Sami was slain in front of his house, a doctor at the Baqoubah General Hospital said.

Hours earlier in Baqoubah, a roadside bomb went off as an Iraqi police patrol was passing, killing a police officer and injuring six others, police Lt. Hussein Jasim said.

Armed men also killed Iraqi National Guard Capt. Hamed Hassan Salman in a market in the western city of Qaim, near the border with Syria, witnesses said.

Meanwhile, twin car bombs killed at least two Iraqi soldiers in Mosul. A van tried to swerve inside a joint convoy of US and Iraqi military vehicles, but exploded prematurely, killing an unknown number of civilians, US army Sergeant Chris Schaeffer told AFP. A second car parked on a street nearby went off and killed two Iraqi soldiers, Schaeffer said.

© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)