DID PETRAEUS COUNT THESE DEATHS?

I mean, there's a chance they weren't "sectarian," isn't there?

Iraq: Boycott of Sermons After Killings

Sep 21 06:45 AM US/Eastern
By KATARINA KRATOVAC
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) - Two aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani were killed in shootings within hours, prompting his Basra followers to boycott Friday sermons in protest amid fears that an internal Shiite power struggle was increasingly targeting Iraq's top Shiite cleric.

Al-Sistani's representative in the Diwaniyah province, Ahmed al- Barqaawi, was gunned down while driving home to the city of Diwaniyah, about 80 miles south of Baghdad, police officials said.

Hours earlier, one of the cleric's representatives in the Basra area, Amjad al-Janabi, was killed along with his driver in a shooting west of the southern city, police said.

The deaths bring to at least five the number of al-Sistani aides slain since early August but it remains unclear if the killings reflect internal Shiite disputes or are the work of Sunni insurgents opposed to the vast influence enjoyed by al-Sistani over Iraq's Shiites and politics since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.