IRAQ: Gunmen assassinated Baghdad's deputy police chief early yesterday, the second high-profile killing in the capital in a week. Brig Amer Ali Nayef and his son Khalid, a police lieutenant, had just left their house in Dora, southern Baghdad, to drive to work when they were shot.
A group led by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it was behind the assassination and warned other officials that they would face the same fate.
In a similar shooting a week ago, the governor of Baghdad, Ali Haidari, died. The killings appear to be part of an increasingly sophisticated insurgent operation to undermine elections this month. For months, insurgents have made Iraqi security forces one of their principal targets, claiming hundreds of lives and undermining the Iraqi government's grip on security.
American commanders have admitted that four of Iraq's 18 provinces will not be secure enough when elections are held.
Witnesses of yesterday's shooting said the gunmen were lying in wait for Brig Nayef as he left his house at 7.30 a.m. As he drove off in his white Nissan Maxima car, another car drove up with three men inside and shots were fired. The Maxima crashed into a neighbour's wall.
"I heard a big explosion first and I saw the car drive up and heard the shooting. Then the car crashed into my garden. I saw two armed men get out and come close to the car and they kept on firing as if they were finishing them off," a neighbour said.
Both the brigadier and his son, who had been driving, were dressed in police uniforms, but they had avoided the usual heavy security that senior Iraqi police officials rely on when they travel.
Col Karim Fahad, head of the nearby Bilat al-Shuhada police station, said Brig Nayef was a popular and respected man who had spent more than 30 years in the Iraqi police force.
Meanwhile, two US soldiers were killed in south-western Baghdad yesterday when their Bradley armoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb, and a suicide bomber drove a stolen police car packed with explosives into a police station in the city, killing at least three people.
Mr Geoff Hoon, the UK defence secretary, yesterday confirmed 400 extra British troops will be deployed to southern Iraq to boost security before the elections.