BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki led mourners yesterday at the funeral of lawmaker Harith Al-Obaidi, who was shot dead a day earlier in a Baghdad mosque.

Several political leaders paid tribute to Al-Obaidi, a senior Sunni Muslim, as his coffin and that of his bodyguard, who was also killed in the mosque attack, were carried through Baghdad’s streets by Iraq’s Honour Guard.

A teenage gunman shot Al-Obaidi and his bodyguard in Al-Shawaf mosque in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Al-Yarmuk.

The gunman then killed three others and injured 12 by throwing a grenade into a crowd before killing himself.

The two coffins were taken by pick-up truck from the headquarters of Obaidi’s Islamic Party, also in Al-Yarmuk, to Parliament in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

There Maliki, Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi and MPs joined in prayer before the coffins were carried part-way to the Cemetery of Martyrs in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah, then driven the rest of the way by truck.

“This was a brutal crime,” said Mahdi, a Shiite Muslim. “We have to learn lessons from these events and must work hand-in-hand to combat dark groups.” Al-Obaidi, born in 1966, was deputy chairman of Parliament’s human rights committee and head of the biggest Sunni bloc in Parliament, the National Concord Front. On Thursday he had called for an independent inquiry into torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq’s prisons.

Iraq has seen several political assassinations since the US-led invasion of 2003.

In February, Islamic Party official Samir Safwat was killed outside his Baghdad home by gunmen in a car. A month earlier, two candidates standing in provincial elections held on January 31 were killed in Baghdad and Mosul.

Friday’s attack came less than three weeks before the June 30 withdrawal of US troops from Iraq’s urban centers, as part of an accord between Baghdad and Washington that will see all US combat troops leave Iraq by the end of 2011.

Meanwhile, the US Embassy said two more American contractors have been released from Iraqi custody but two others remain in detention.

Embassy spokesman James Fennell said the Americans were released on bond late on Friday, a day after a third contractor was freed. US-backed Iraqi forces detained the contractors June 3 in connection with an investigation into the stabbing death of another US contractor. But the Iraqi government has given conflicting accounts about the specific allegations against them.

Fennell said yesterday that all five remain under investigation.