A spokesman for the Iraqi government said that an unidentified gang had opened fire late Thursday on a car carrying members of the judge's family in a flashpoint district of western Baghdad.
It was not immediately clear whether the relatives fell victim to a targeted assassination designed to intimidate Judge Mohammed Al Oreibi Al Khalifa or simply to a bitter civil conflict that claims around 100 lives per day.
"The brother-in-law and his son were assassinated in Ghazaliyah while they went to collect some of their belongings. They have been assassinated by some unknown group," spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh said. "The court is totally independent but we don't have any information that the judge will drop out. He's continuing as far as I know. I talked with him and he is continuing with the job," he said.
Judge Khalifa is presiding in the trial of Iraq's ousted leader Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide during the 1988 Anfal campaign against the country's Kurdish minority.
Throughout the legal proceedings against the former strongman, lawyers acting for both the defense and prosecution have been intimidated, and some members of Saddam's legal team have been murdered.
Saddam was thrown out of court Tuesday for the third successive day of hearings, prompting a revolt among the defendants and their ejection. The trial resumes October 9.
Thursday's killings came after the supposed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq released a recorded message on the Internet in which he threatened a new "all out offensive" against Iraq's US-backed government.
In the recording, which appeared on the Internet and could not be verified, Abu Hamza Al Muhajer also called on Muslim biological and nuclear scientists to join the struggle against Iraq's "occupier."
Muhajer called on insurgents to kidnap Western Christians to put pressure on Washington to free Egyptian religious leader Omar Abdel Rahman, who was jailed for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
The announcement came during the first week of Ramadan, a period already marked the by the highest number of suicide bombings in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003.
Before prayers began, two policemen were killed in clashes with armed men in the restive southern neighborhood of Dura, while a pair of bombs exploded in the once peaceful middle class neighborhood of Karrada, wounding 11.
Iraqis therefore went to their mosques Friday for the first weekly prayers of the Ramadan holy month with an air of trepidation.
The start of the annual period of fasting and devotion, traditionally a time of peace and brotherhood, was marked by the single highest number of suicide bomb attacks in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003.
Meanwhile, rival Shiite and Sunni death squads roam the countries cities alongside insurgent gangs and illegal militias, carrying out kidnappings and torture murders - sometimes with the complicity of security forces.
"I ask where is the reconciliation project and who is seeking to stop the bloodshed?" demanded Sheikh Harith Al Obeidi, preaching in the Shawaf Mosque in Yarmuk, a war-torn Sunni suburb of western Baghdad. "Where is the government in this whole affair and who is going to solve the problem?"
Across the sectarian divide, Shiite preachers also expressed their anger.
Abdel Mahdi Al Karbalaie, a representative of Iraq's senior Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, accused Sunni extremists and Saddam's supporters of fueling the violence and driving Shiites from their homes. "Their crimes have also included killing the simple citizen, the government employee, the university professor, and security forces," he said.
"We hereby urge the Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki and the security apparatus of the elected government to curb terrorism," he said.
Iraqi officials say that 40,000 families - some 240,000 people - have been driven from their homes since sectarian fighting erupted in February when Sunni bombers demolished a holy Shiite shrine in Samarra.
Violence raged on around Iraq Friday, with bombings and shootings accounting for several lives, while government security forces struck back in the lawless province of Diyala, a hunting ground for Al Qaeda.
Brigadier General Shakir Abdel Hussein Al Kaabi, commander of the Fifth Division of the Iraqi Army, said that his men supported by US forces has arrested 60 suspects in the provincial capital Baquba.
The morgue in the Kut, south of Baghdad, reported receiving two corpses found by police, one riddled with bullets, the other lacking a head.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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