9 Shiite Laborers Die in Iraq Attack; Sunni Cleric Backing Election Slain

Gunmen shot to death nine Shiite Muslim laborers Wednesday near the city of Baqubah, the latest attack in an ongoing campaign of violence against Shiites by Sunni insurgents rebelling against the U.S.-backed government.

In the capital, snipers fired on the home of Salama Khafaji, a prominent Shiite politician, wounding two guards. Armed men also killed Sheik Hamza Abbas Issawi, a Sunni Muslim cleric who had called for participation in upcoming parliamentary elections, after evening prayers Tuesday in Fallouja.

Early today, the U.S. military announced the deaths of a soldier and a Marine. The soldier was shot Wednesday north of Baghdad, and the Marine was shot Wednesday in Fallouja, separate announcements said. Neither was identified.

At least 2,110 U.S. service members have died since the war began in March 2003.

The day laborers were gunned down as they headed to farm jobs in a minivan Wednesday morning amid a patchwork of Sunni and Shiite Muslim villages seven miles north of Baqubah. Two others were injured in the attack.

“They were killed because they were Shiites,” said Haji Awad Nouri, a city councilman in the village of Abu Saida, where the workers had boarded the vehicle. “They were only farmers who had nothing to do with government or the Americans. This is meant to ignite sectarian war.”

At Baqubah General Hospital, where the casualties were taken, the wives and daughters of victims wailed and beat their heads in agony as the dead were placed into coffins.

Raed Rubayie of the provincial governor’s office said security forces were on high alert, concerned that the incident would escalate sectarian tensions in mixed Diyala province two weeks before the parliamentary elections.

In Fallouja, a largely Sunni city in western Iraq, nearly 2,000 mourners, including the city’s mayor and clergy, joined the funeral procession for Issawi, some chanting against Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda-linked insurgent group, others against Iraqi security forces.

Issawi had been calling for Iraq’s Sunnis to avoid violence and take part in the political process, said Abdullah Mahmoud, a worshiper who said he saw gunmen in a white BMW shoot the cleric with AK-47s.

Issawi was a prominent member of the Muslim Scholars Assn., a Sunni clerical group that called Wednesday for the release of five Western hostages being held by two insurgent groups.

Four hostages -- an American, two Canadians and a Briton -- are members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an activist group, who were abducted over the weekend. The fifth, abducted in northern Iraq, is a German archeologist married to an Iraqi.

“These kidnappings are obviously meant to inspire fear in the weeks before the elections,” said Col. Muayed Hashem of the Baghdad police department.

U.S. and Iraqi military forces also launched the latest in a series of counterinsurgency operations in western Iraq, near the city of Hit.

Nearly 1,500 American troops and 500 Iraqi soldiers were taking part, a news release said.

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Times special correspondents in Baqubah and Fallouja contributed to this report.