Pro-Western Iraqi Shiite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei was assassinated in the holy city of Najaf in central Iraq , the cleric's London-based group, the al-Khoei Foundation, said. Details were sketchy, but it appeared that al-Khoei was stabbed to death by a large number of attackers in a mosque in Najaf, and that at least two other people were injured. "I knew Sheikh al-Khoei. He was resident in this country. He had huge expectations about the future of the Shiia people post-Saddam," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters in London.

"It is an appalling tragedy that he has been killed before he can take part in that process," he said at a press conference with Kuwait's State Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah.

A Foreign Office spokesman called al-Khoei "a highly respectful leader of the Shiite community and a member of the UK Muslim community."

He added that Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien had spoken to his nephew Youssef al-Khoei earlier Thursday.

"Persons who were with him... said he was martyred by treacherous hands," his nephew Jawad al-Khoei was quoted as saying on the BBC teletext service, which said the killing took place at a mosque in Najaf.

An Iraqi opposition source told AFP that another cleric, with the given name of Sheikh Bilal, was wounded, as was an Iraqi journalist, Maad Fayyad, working for the London-based newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

An editor at Asharq al-Awsat confirmed that Fayyad had been injured, but that his wounds were not life threatening.
He said he was told by Fayyad that a large number of people had been involved in the attack.

Majid was the son of the late Ayatollah al-Khoei, one of the main leaders of Iraq's Shiite community during the 1991 Gulf War , who died in 1992 under house arrest.

There had been speculation that al-Khoei, who repeatedly called for Shiite cooperation with the United States, had gone back to Najaf with help from US forces, and that his return signalled a US attempt to promote a "pro-American" current as Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed.

A spokesman for al-Khoei's foundation in London had earlier told AFP in Dubai that the cleric had been attacked with knives while he was visiting Imam Ali's tomb in Najaf.

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Abdul majid al-Khoei, secretary general of the London-based Al-Khoei Foundation has been assassinated in Najaf.