Gunmen kill Iraqi journalist

Gunmen killed an Iraqi journalist working for a US-funded television network in Basra and assassinated a senior government official in Baghdad yesterday in the latest attacks following the January 30 election.

Police in Basra, 550 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, said Alhurra correspondent Abdul-Hussein Khazal had been shot dead at his home in the mainly Shi'ite city. Alhurra is a Virginia-based satellite news network set up with US funding to compete with Arabic channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya.

Alhurra said one of Mr Khazal's sons had also been killed. He was three years old.

Police in Baghdad said a director in the Ministry of Culture and Housing was assassinated yesterday evening when gunmen attacked his car. Earlier, gunmen kidnapped a senior Interior Ministry official, Colonel Riyadh Katei Aliwi.

In Baghdad's Haifa Street area, an insurgent stronghold, three members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party were killed in an ambush, and guerillas skirmished with US and Iraqi forces.

North of the capital, a US soldier was killed in an attack by insurgents near the town of Balad, the military said.