Senior aide to radical cleric gunned downafter prayers

Published on Friday 11 April 2008 21:46

A SENIOR aide to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was gunned down in the Shiite holy city of Kufa yesterday, igniting fears of renewed tension with the US-backed Iraqi government.

Riyadh al-Nouri, the dir-ector of Sadr's office in nearby Najaf, was killed as he drove home after attending Friday prayers.

The arrest of Nouri by US forces in 2004 helped provoke a massive uprising across central and southern Iraq in which several thousand people were killed.

Meanwhile, US and British air strikes in Iraq killed 12 suspected militants. In Baghdad, an unmanned US drone aircraft fired missiles on men carrying grenades and mortars in the Sadr City area.

A British spokesman said a helicopter had hit a group of gunmen firing on Iraqi forces in central Basra overnight, killing six. "They were positively identified as an active mortar team," Major Tom Holloway said.