- KUWAIT (Reuters) - Senior
Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei and an aide were killed by a
mob at the mosque in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf on Thursday, the Khoei
family foundation said.
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- Ali Jabr, a member of the London-based Khoei foundation,
told Reuters Abdel Majid was dead. Another foundation official, Ghanem
Jawad, told al-Jazeera television Khoei's aide Haidar Kelidar was also
killed during the mosque attack.
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- Majid was the son of the late Grand Ayatollah al-Khoei,
spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ites at the time of the 1991 Gulf War.
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- Al-Khoei's nephew, Jawad al-Khoei, told Reuters from
the Iranian holy city of Qom, that Abdul Majid was stabbed to death at
the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the holiest shrines for Shi'ite Muslims.
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- The murders are sure to raise tensions among Iraq's majority
Shi'ite population. Majid was a close aide of Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who called on the population last week
not to hinder the U.S. and British invasion.
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