Former top oil official shot dead in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - A former top Iraqi oil official was shot dead Thursday outside his home in north Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.
Ali Hamid, a former oil ministry director general, was gunned down as he was leaving for work at around 8 am (0400 GMT), the official said.
In other violence, two policemen were killed and three people were wounded, one of them a policeman, in a bomb explosion in Baquba, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of the capital, police said.
In the restive northern city of Mosul, a suicide car bombing injured three civilians on a road commonly used by US and Iraqi convoys, police and hospital sources said.

05/19/2005 08:17 GMT