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Assailants in the northern city of Mosul on Monday shot and killed a leading cleric of an influential Sunni Muslim group that's called for boycotting Iraq's parliamentary elections, set for Jan. 30. In separate incidents, private British security guards were blamed for killing an Iraqi policeman in an altercation in central Baghdad, and authorities south of the capital said they found 12 bodies, five of them without heads. The cleric's assassination was the latest in a spate of violence, much of it apparently intended to derail U.S.-backed plans to hold nationwide elections at the end of January. Gunmen in a getaway vehicle fired at the cleric, Sheik Feydhi Mohammed al Feydhi, as he left his home in Mosul at 9 a.m., colleagues said. No one was captured. Feydhi belonged to the Moslem Scholars Association, which opposes the elections, saying they shouldn't be held until American "occupiers" withdraw from Iraq. The group claims to represent 3,000 mosques. If the group persuades enough Sunnis to boycott the elections, it could call the legitimacy of their results into question, prolonging the mayhem that's torn at Iraq since last year's U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. [more]