Senior Iraqi official gunned down in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, (AFP) - A top official at Iraq's science and technology ministry has been shot dead along with a female civil servant by unknown attackers in Baghdad, the interior ministry said.
"Thamer Abdellatif, one the general directors of the ministry, and a civil servant, Ikhlas Ghalib, were shot dead at 7:30 am (0430 GMT) in the al-Qhadeer district in the centre of Baghdad," said ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdelrahmane.
The pair were targeted in their car as they drove to work, he said.
The assassinations are the latest in a string of attacks against high-profile figures in Iraq's interim administration under Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
On September 23, a senior official from the northern Iraqi oil company was shot dead. Eleven days earlier, a colonel at the interior ministry was killed in a car bomb explosion near the Iraqi capital.