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Najaf: Leading Shiite politician Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, a pivotal force in post-war Iraq, was assassinated on August 29 in a car bomb blast that killed at least 82 people and wounded around 200 in the holy city of Najaf.

The bombing dealt a hard blow to US rebuilding efforts in the country, barely a week after a suicide bomber detonated a truckload of explosives at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the world body's top envoy to Iraq.

Attacks against US troops carried on as a soldier was killed in a bomb attack North East of Baghdad and a Kurdish security official was gunned down by radical Islamists with links to the al-Qaida terror network.

Hakim, head of the Iran-backed Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), was killed moments after he delivered a weekly sermon at the Tomb of Ali in the holy city, 180 km South of Baghdad.

Hospital sources said 82 people had been killed and 229 injured in the attack, giving the latest toll.

Hakim, who spent some 20 years in exile in Iran before returning in triumph to Iraq in May, "met a martyr's fate along with his bodyguards", Mohsen Hekim, son of the Ayatollah's brother, Abdul Aziz, said in Tehran.

"Hakim died in a car bomb explosion today afternoon after prayers," confirmed SAIRI official Adel Abdel Mahdi in Baghdad.

The car exploded outside the shrine compound's Southern gate where Hakim normally entered and exited on Fridays.

Agencies