Bomb kills Iraqi politician tied to al-Sadr

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — A roadside bomb killed a prominent member of Muqtada al-Sadr’s political movement Thursday, raising fears of new internal Shiite bloodshed ahead of regional elections expected in January.

The victims’ allies blamed U.S. and Iraqi forces for the blast. Suspicion also fell on Shiite splinter groups — some with suspected links to Iran, which has sheltered al-Sadr for nearly 18 months.

Saleh al-Auqaeili, considered a moderate within al-Sadr’s movement, was traveling in a convoy with other Shiite lawmakers when the bombing occurred about 200 yards from an Iraqi army checkpoint in mostly Shiite eastern Baghdad, a colleague said.

Al-Auqaeili died at a hospital, Sadrist spokesman Ahmed al-Massoudi said. One commuter on a motorcycle was also killed in the blast, police said.

Al-Sadr’s followers have long opposed the U.S. military presence in Iraq, and some of them were quick to blame the Americans and their Iraqi allies, citing the movement’s opposition to a U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that has been under negotiation for months.

Later, however, the Sadrist political department called the killing a “terrorist act of criminal gangs,” a phrase often used to describe renegade Shiite militants that the U.S. believes are trained and armed by Iran. Tehran denies links to Iraqi Shiite militants.

The two top American officials in Iraq condemned the “heinous crime” as “an attack against Iraq’s democratic institutions.”

The attack reflects tension within the Shiite community after the splintering of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia, which fought U.S. and Iraqi troops for weeks in Baghdad’s Sadr City district until a cease-fire last May.

Shiite politicians negotiated the truce that enabled the Iraqi army to take control of the sprawling Sadr City slum. But some militia fighters were angered at what they considered a “sell-out” by Shiite politicians and refused to heed al-Sadr’s orders transforming the Mahdi militia into an unarmed social movement.

U.S. and Iraqi officials also fear A U.S.-allied Sunni militia leader was killed Thursday with three of his relatives when a roadside bomb exploded next to a pickup truck in which they were traveling in Udaim, north of Baghdad, police said.