Baghdad, Iraq – Gunmen killed the brother of Iraq’s Shiite vice president Sunday, and a top trade ministry official escaped assassination in another part of the capital, while the death toll in a major truck bombing the day before rose to 30. A U.S. Marine was fatally injured in another bombing.
Ghalib Abdul-Mahdi, brother of Vice President Adil Abdul- Mahdi, died along with his driver when a vehicle pulled alongside their car on bustling Palestine Street about 7:45 a.m. and gunmen inside opened fire. Abdul-Mahdi was en route to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s office, where he served as an adviser, two aides to the vice president said.
Later Sunday, a top official in the Ministry of Trade, Qais Dawood Hasan, was wounded and two of his bodyguards were killed when gunmen ambushed their convoy in the upscale Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, the scene of several high-profile kidnappings and armed attacks on government officials and foreigners.
Five other bodyguards and a bystander were injured, police said.
The U.S. command also announced Sunday that a Marine died of injuries suffered the day before in a roadside bombing near Baghdad.
At least 2,016 U.S. military members have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Elsewhere, an Iraqi border guard was killed and seven other Iraqi security personnel were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint in Sinjar near the border with Syria, Dr. Fadhil Abdul- Kareem said.
A roadside bomb destroyed one of several oil tankers Sunday on a main road south of Baghdad, sending a fireball up over the area and killing the two men inside, police Capt. Ibrahim Abdul-Ridha said. Four civilian passers-by were wounded.
A roadside bomb killed a farmer on his tractor and seriously wounded two other civilians in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police Capt. Laith Mohammed said.
Another drive-by shooting in the capital killed two construction workers and wounded three.
A statement posted on an Islamic website claimed responsibility for the slaying of the vice president’s brother in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The claim could not be verified. There was no claim for the attack on the trade ministry official.
Adil Abdul-Mahdi is one of Iraq’s two vice presidents – one a Sunni and the other a Shiite – and the killing appeared part of an escalating campaign of violence between members of the rival religious communities.
Late Sunday, police found the bodies of 11 unidentified men – blindfolded, hands bound and with gunshots in the head – in a village near Baghdad where Sunnis and Shiites clashed three days ago.
As insurgents stepped up their attacks, U.S. aircraft went into action in insurgency hotspots north and west of the capital.
