A suicide car bomber targeted the headquarters of Iraq's main Shi'ite Muslim political party today in what its leader called an assassination attempt less than five weeks before historic elections.
The bomb detonated outside the main office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an opposition party set up in exile in Iran during Saddam Hussein's rule and one of the top groups contesting the January 30 election.
Police said 13 people were killed and around 50 wounded in the attack, including several receptionists and guards at the party's headquarters. None of the party leadership was hurt.
As well as being SCIRI's main office, the building is home to party leader Mr Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who was in residence at the time. The house, near a busy intersection, was previously home to Tareq Aziz, Saddam's now jailed deputy prime minister.
Hakim, who spent two decades in exile in Iran, heads a Shi'ite coalition that is expected to perform strongly in next month's election, probably putting Iraq's 60 per cent Shi'ite majority in power after marginalisation under Saddam and before.
The SCIRI leader said his party would not retaliate against what he called an attack by a Sunni insurgent alliance of former Saddam loyalists and Islamists. SCIRI's Badr militia fought Saddam from Iran and still counts at least several thousand men.
"We have chosen the path of non-violence and we will stick to it," he said from his devastated compound.
"The only ideology these people know is terror. We laid down our arms in favour of pluralism. If we wanted violence we would have responded a long time ago," Mr Hakim said.
Mr Hakim's brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the party's previous leader, was assassinated in a suicide car bomb attack outside a Shi'ite shrine in Najaf in August 2003.