Twenty dead in Iraq car bomb

A car bomb in Iraq today killed at least 20 people, including a leading Shi'ite Muslim cleric, outside one of Shia Islam's holiest shrines in the southern city of Najaf.

The latest violence followed two attacks in other parts of Iraq which killed one American soldier and injured eight others.

The Najaf explosion killed Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Mohsen Hakim, a leading SCIRI official based in the Iranian capital Tehran, issued a statement, saying: "Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim has become a martyr."

The car bomb was outside the Mosque of Iman Ali, the most sacred of all shrines in the Shi'ite religion. It followed a bomb blast on Sunday at the office of Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim, the uncle of Bakr al-Hakim. He escaped, but three of his guards were killed in the attack.

Today's bomb is not seen as part of the attacks by organised criminals on British soldiers in the south of the country, or by groups of terrorists on US soldiers in the rest of the country.

Instead, suspicions are growing that it may be the result of a squabble between factions of the Shi'ite community. Some Shi'ite groups, including SCIRI, want to co-operate with the Coalition while others want a holy war against the British and American forces they claim are "infidel occupiers".

While Shi'ite officials blamed forces loyal to Saddam Hussein for the attack, some mourners said they suspected Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, an inflammatory young leader who has called for US troops to leave the town.

Al-Sadr is widely thought to have been behind the death of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, another leading Shia cleric, who was killed shortly after returning to Iraq in the last days of the war.

Elswhere in Iraq, a US soldier was killed and four wounded when a convoy was attacked by a rocketpropelled grenade near Baqouba, 70km north-east of Baghdad.

The soldier's death raises the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq to 282, of whom 67 have died in fighting since 1 May, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

In Ramadi, 100km west of Baghdad, four US troops were hurt in a bomb attack as they drove through the town.