Cleric killed by Najaf mob

A London-based Muslim cleric and peacemaker whom the Americans had earmarked for a key role in the post-Saddam Iraq, has been hacked to death by a mob in the holy city of Najaf.

Abdul Majid Al-Khoei, a father of four, had lived for more than 10 years in Kilburn and volunteered to fly to Iraq to work as an intermediary for the British and US forces.

He was assassinated along with his aide, Haidar Kelidar, at the city's mosque, according to a member of his family. Witnesses said the two men were rushed by the crowd and killed when Majid drew a gun and fired it - some said into the air, others into the crowd - after members of a faction loyal to a different mullah insulted him.

Ali Jabr, a member of the London-based Khoei family, confirmed Majid was dead.

The murder is sure to raise tensions among Iraq's majority Shi'ite population. It is thought the killers were likely to have been Sunni Muslims loyal to Saddam.

Majid is the son of the late Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ites at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, who was executed

Saddam. The family had to flee Iraq after the failed 1991 uprising and many of Majid's relatives were murdered. His nephew, Jawad al-Khoei, said today: "We talked to the persons who were with him at the time of the incident. They said he was martyred by treacherous hands."

Majid had worked independently under the protection of the Coalition, acting not only as an interpreter between Iraqi prisoners of war and their captors, but also guide and educator.

Within days of arrival in Iraq he had found himself acting as mediator between an angry crowd of protesters and American troops who had surrounded one of Najaf's most sacred shrines, where 100 fighters had shut themselves in.

"I started by speaking to the crowd through a microphone and on the town's local radio telling them to calm down," he said last week. "I said that I was an Iraqi who had been forced to leave for London but I had returned - a sign that things were now getting better and they were safe."

Elsewhere today, US soldiers and special forces were combing Baghdad in the search for Saddam Hussein, as battles raged in the still-disputed sections of the city and in the north of Iraq. Belief is growing in Washington that Saddam is still alive.

US marines were involved in a seven-hour firefight with remnants of the Special Republican Guard. One soldier was killed by shrapnel and up to 20 were wounded at a mosque near the Tigris river, where it was rumoured Saddam was hiding. The marines secured the area and searched the mosque, but found no trace of Saddam.