Gunmen killed a Sunni Muslim cleric who was entering a mosque in Baghdad to perform noon prayers yesterday -- the second attack on a cleric belonging to the influential Association of Muslim Scholars in as many days -- the group said.
The attack came as relatives pleaded for the release of a British and two American hostages as a deadline loomed for the trio's beheading.
PHOTO: AP
The cleric, Sheik Mohammed Jadoa al-Janabi, was killed in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite al-Baya neighborhood. He was unarmed and had no security guards, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Late Sunday, gunmen attacked the car of another cleric, Sheik Hazem al-Zeidi, after he left a mosque in Baghdad's mostly Shiite eastern slum of Sadr City, said Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, a senior member of the group.
Al-Zeidi was killed and his two bodyguards were taken hostage, though they were released unharmed early yesterday, he said.
There have been tit-for-tat killings of Shiite and Sunni clerics across the country the past year. They are widely believed to be motivated by sectarian sentiments, but the embattled police never thoroughly investigate such cases.
The Association of Muslim Scholars is a conservative group that strongly opposes the US presence in Iraq but has worked for the release of foreign hostages.
Insurgents have used kidnappings and spectacular bombings as their weapons of choice in a 17-month campaign to undermine the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and force the US and its allies out of Iraq.
The Tawhid and Jihad group, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was threatening to behead Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and Briton Kenneth Bigley yesterday. The three construction contractors were seized from their Baghdad house last week.
The British government and Bigley's brother, Philip, appealed for their release in statements broadcast repeatedly yesterday on pan-Arab satellite TV station Al-Arabiya.
"Ken has enjoyed working in the Arab world for the last 10 years in civil engineering and has many Arabic friends and is understanding and appreciative of the Islamic culture. He wanted to help the ordinary Iraqi people and is just doing his job," Philip Bigley said. "At the end of the day, we just want him home safe and well."
Hensley's wife, Patty, told Al-Jazeera that she learned of her husband's abduction through media reports. She said he, like all Americans in Iraq, was there to help the Iraqi people.
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