An official working for Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been murdered by an attacker in the Iraqi city of Najaf, a local police chief said on Saturday. Brigadier General Abdul Karim Mustafa said Sheikh Abdullah Falak was stabbed to death and that police were now hunting for the killer.
"His body was found in his office on Al-Rasool street," Mustafa said, according to AFP. A source at Sistani's office said Falak used to handle all the legal issues for the cleric in Najaf and that he was attacked on Friday inside the office.
In another incident south of Baghdad one person was killed and five others were wounded in a car bomb attack on Saturday near a factory in the town of Mahmudiyah, security officials said.
And in the southern city of Amara gunmen shot dead a former Baath party member in the Al-Hussain neighbourhood, a local police officer said.
Elsewhere, a bomb went off inside a minibus in eastern Baghdad and killed at least five people, a medic and a security official said Saturday. At least 11 more people were hurt in the largely Shiite neighbourhood of Baladiyat near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, they said.
A mortar attack also struck the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding four, another officer said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi troops have detained 46 suspected militants and killed five others in a new operation in eastern Diyala, the army said Saturday, while a U.S. soldier was reported killed in an explosion in the province.
The Iraqi army said the operation launched Wednesday in several areas and villages in eastern Diyala, which is near the Iranian border, also led to the freeing of a kidnap victim and the discovery of two car bombs and six other explosive devices, as well as the capture of 46 suspects and the killing of five others.
