(Adds tribal leader wounded, militant financier detained)

By Aseel Kami and Aws Qusay

BAGHDAD, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Roadside bombs killed an Iraqi Shi'ite mayor and wounded a tribal leader working with U.S. military forces on Thursday, part of a spate of apparently sectarian attacks across the country.

Abbas al-Khafaji, Shi'ite mayor of Iskandariya and a member of the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, was killed along with four of his guards in an attack on his convoy, police said.

Iskandariya, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim town, lies about 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad in a turbulent region which U.S. soldiers know as the "triangle of death".

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for Khafaji's killing. Roadside bombs are commonly used by Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and Washington accuses Iran of supplying Shi'ite militias with such weapons -- a charge Tehran denies.

A group led by al Qaeda in Iraq has stepped up attacks during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which ends next week. It said last month its campaign would also target tribal leaders cooperating with U.S. forces in Iraq.

In Salahuddin province north of Baghdad one of those tribal leaders, Sheikh Muawiya Jebara, was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near his motorcade. The bomb killed three of Jebara's guards, his brother Abdullah told Reuters.

In Baghdad, police said a bomb planted in a minibus killed four people and wounded eight as they were queuing for fuel in the southern district of Zaafaraniya on Thursday morning.

Five other people were killed by bombs in the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi security forces, backed by thousands of extra U.S. troops, have imposed a security crackdown in and around Baghdad in an effort to curb sectarian fighting and militant attacks which kill hundreds of Iraqis every month.

Both Baghdad and Washington say the campaign, launched in February, has led to a clear reduction in the killings but that levels of violence remain too high.

U.S. DETAINS MILITANT FINANCIER

The U.S. military said Iraqi and U.S. forces have detained a militant financier who they estimated had received $100 million from "terrorist supporters" in Italy, Syria and Egypt to fund attacks in Iraq.

The suspect was detained in eastern Baghdad's Kindi district on Tuesday. A U.S. statement said he had employed 40 to 50 people who helped plant roadside bombs targeting U.S. and Iraqi security forces, paying $3,000 for each attack.

"The $100 million figure ... is derived from intelligence reports estimates of what he has received spanning several months this year," U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Rudy Burwell said.

The U.S. military also said it had detained a member of Iraq's parliament after an Iraqi special forces raid on a suspected al Qaeda meeting on Sept. 29. It said he was being held for questioning.

A spokesman for the Iraqi parliament said Naif Mohammed Jasim, a member of the main Sunni Arab bloc the Accordance Front, had been taken into custody while attending a funeral in Sharqat on Wednesday.

In Iraq's holy city of Najaf, residents said a major Shi'ite ceremony passed off peacefully when 1.5 million pilgrims marked the anniversary of the death 13 centuries ago of Imam Ali, Prophet Mohammad's son-in-law and first Imam of Shi'ite Islam.

It was the first major Shi'ite religious gathering since clashes killed at least 52 people in August in nearby Kerbala.

The violence in August was believed to involve Iraq's two most powerful Shi'ite militias, the Badr Organisation linked to SIIC and Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army.

(Additional reporting by Paul Tait)

AlertNet news is provided by