Khoei was apparently stabbed and shot to death by a large number of attackers in a mosque in the Shiite holy city, in an assault that was reported to have left two others dead.

The 50-year religious figure was the head of the multi-million dollar Al-Khoei Foundation, based in London.

The foundation was created by his father, the late Grand Ayatollah Abdul Qassem Mussawi al-Khoei, who was one of the highest Shiite religious authorities in the world at the time of the Gulf War, but who died in 1992 while under house arrest in Najaf.

He had become one the three grand ayatollahs in 1972 and was the most respected, a reference for Shiites in all aspects of their lives.

As a result he received religious taxes from those who chose him as their "spiritual guide" and he accumulated huge sums of money, the majority of it pouring into banks in London and Vienna, according to one close relative.

With his death in 1992, his son became secretary general of the foundation and continued to receive the tax from his followers, who were recruited in Pakistan, in the United Arab Emirates and in Iraq.

The foundation also has powerful branches in Canada and the United States, where it manages the huge Shiite mosque in New York.

Ayatollah Khoei refused to mix religion with politics, finding himself as a result at odds with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic republic in neighboring Iran.

But that did not save him from the repressive regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He was taken with his family in March 1991 to Baghdad and forced to appear on television with Saddam and publicly express Shiite support for the regime following the crisis resulting from the invasion of Kuwait.

During the Shiite uprising after the Gulf War of the same year, his son was named head of a committee charged with managing Najaf.

Abdul Majid al-Khoei managed to escape the army's brutal suppression of the revolt by sneaking into Iran and from there he made his way to London where he has lived since.

He was also in charge of the moderate Shiite Parliament of Iraq. In December 2002 he took part in a conference in London of the main Iraqi exile opposition figures.

But, according to a relative, he opposed other members of the Shiite movement, including his father's successor, the 73-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini Sistani.

Sistani, who was kept under house arrest until US-led forces took the city, refused to welcome them, instead calling for Shiites to remain neutral.

Encouraged by the British govermment, Khoei arrived in Iraq last week, seeking to head up a similar committee to the one of 1991, according to the relative.

In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, he attributed the absence of a Shiite revolt, as anticipated by coalition forces, to fear over a repeat of 1991, in which they were abandoned to their fate by the United States.

SPACE.WIRE