  We are concerned with singular elliptic equations of the form $-\Delta u=
p(x)(g(u)+ f(u)+|\nabla u|^a)$ in $\RR^N$ ($N\geq 3$), where $p$ is a positive
weight and $0< a <1$. Under the hypothesis that $f$ is a nondecreasing function
with sublinear growth and $g$ is decreasing and unbounded around the origin, we
establish the existence of a ground state solution vanishing at infinity. Our
arguments rely essentially on the maximum principle.
