Murdered in a mosque: the cleric who went home to act as a peacemaker

The 12 years of exile in Kilburn, in north-west London could not have prepared him for this. Abdul Majid al-Khoei had lived quietly there, running a charitable religious foundation.

He took part in polite interfaith dialogues. He was one of a number of Muslim leaders who met Tony Blair to offer advice on Islamic sensitivities to foster good race relations, at home and abroad.

Nothing in that could have hinted of what would happen yesterday – that he would be hacked to death by a crowd at one of Islam's holiest shrines.

It was, by terrible irony, the shrine holding the silver-covered tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, who is honoured by Muslims as the first Islamic martyr. And now martyrdom came to Mr Khoei, who had returned to Iraq from exile in Britain only two weeks ago to act as a peace broker for Allied forces and help rebuild his country.

Mr Khoei, whose father was the pre-eminent spiritual leader of the Shia Muslim community in Iraq, was slain inside the Ali Mosque in Najaf, the third most sacred site for the world's 120 million Shias.

Witnesses said Mr Khoei, who had four children, was dragged outside the building and set upon by attackers armed with knives and swords. He tried to defend himself by firing his gun.

As bullets and insults flew, it took just moments for simmering tensions within Najaf's Shia community to explode into a killing.

The reasons for the killing remained unclear last night. Some said that Mr Khoei was the target of a political assassination by Saddam Hussein loyalists. Others said he had been caught up in a revenge attack on a cleric, reviled for his connections to the Iraqi regime, who was also killed.

The murders took place shortly after 10am as Iraq's leading Shia mullahs gathered for a meeting to decide control of the shrine, which had been occupied by Iraqi gunmen during fighting for Najaf.

Mr Khoei had arrived for the gathering with Haider al-Kadar, the imam who had been in charge of the mosque and was widely disliked as a member of President Saddam's Ministry of Religion. Their joint arrival was a gesture of reconciliation, according to Mr Khoei's supporters.

Ali Assayid Haider, a mullah who had travelled from the southern city of Basra for the meeting, said: "People attacked and killed both of them inside the mosque."

There were fears that the incident could trigger in-fighting among Iraq's Shias, who make up 60 per cent of the population.

Mr Khoei had returned to his hometown of Najaf on 3 April after answering the call for volunteers among exiled Iraqis to act as intermediaries for American and British forces.

He was last week credited with preventing a disastrous confrontation between US soldiers and Shias in Najaf when a group of 100 Marines passed close to the Ali mosque. Mr Khoei calmed the crowd by using a loud-hailer to deny that the Americans were going to enter the mosque as the troops backed away, their guns pointing to the ground.

Friends of the cleric said that he was also keen to assert his independence and had assumed a prominent spiritual role, seeking to calm tensions not only between the foreign troops and local Shias anxious to safeguard the sanctity of their holy places but also between rival factions. He said last week that he and other local clerics were trying to negotiate a deal in which hardcore loyalists would be given safe passage out of the city.

Speaking last week, Mr Khoei said: "For me, to be back after so long, made me full of mixed emotions. I was very happy to be home, but it's also very sad to see people in such a pitiful state. When I left it was a beautiful country, now everyone looks poor with no shoes and ragged clothes."

Reports from those accompanying the cleric suggested that the presence of Mr Kadar in the mosque had sparked an insult from followers of a faction loyal to another Shia mullah, named as Mohammed Braga al Saddar. Adil Adnan al-Moussawi, who was inside the building, said: "Kadar was an animal. The people were shouting they hate him, that he should not be here."

Mr Khoei was seen to pull out a gun. Conflicting witness accounts said he fired bullets into the air and also into the crowd. Whatever happened, the events that followed were savage: Mr Khoei suffered a gunshot wound inside the mosque. As the crowd descended on the two men and dragged them outside, they were cut down by attackers.

In London, aides said they believed the killing was an assassination orchestrated by "members of the regime".

A spokesman for Al-Khoei Foundation: "We believe this was politically motivated – the actions of those within Saddam Hussein's regime who have targeted us."

Sheikh Fazel al-Haidari, a dissident Shia cleric in Iraq, added: "We should not assume Saddam and his Baath party are finished." The killings followed reports that a militia, backed by the American military, had been looting homes and businesses in Najaf. Residents claimed that the US-trained Iraqi Coalition of National Unity was taking control of the city in defiance of the allegiance of much of its population to the man who succeeded Mr Khoei's father, the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, to whom Mr Khoei was a key aide. The US military claimed earlier that the Ayatollah had urged Shias not to attack Allied forces in Iraq. Mr Khoei was among the most prominent of Iraq's exiles and obvious target for anyone seeking to gain a grip on Najaf.

His father, the Grand Ayatollah Abulqasim al-Khoei, was the highest Shia religious authority in Iraq at the time of the uprising against President Saddam in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. The failure of that rebellion forced the cleric to flee to Britain. Many of his relatives were murdered. His father died under house arrest in 1992.

Other sources suggested that the reason for yesterday's killing was due to intense suspicion of Mr Khoei's rapid return to Iraq with the backing of United States, sparking criticism from other Shia factions keen to assert their authority.

Supporters of Mr Khoei had said that he had been given authority by the Americans to administer Najaf, a city of 500,000.

It was left to supporters of Mr Khoei last night to point to the bitter irony of the words used by him to pacify his countrymen a few days earlier: "I said that I was an Iraqi who had been forced to leave but I had returned – a sign that things were now getting better and they were safe."