A senior politician representing Iraq's minority Turkmen population was assassinated by gunmen late last night as he left his office in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
Ahmed Najm al-Din, one of the leaders of the Turkmen Union Party, was shot dead in a drive-by shooting as he was leaving his party's headquarters.
"A group of armed men armed with AK-47s shot him as he was leaving work. It was a terrorist operation, not a criminal attack," Kirkuk police said.
Mr Najm al-Din is the latest of several political figures attacked or assassinated by gunmen in Kirkuk, a wealthy oil-rich city north of Baghdad that has seen a steady increase in violence in recent months.
The city is claimed by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and ethnic tension appears to be at the root of most of the violence. There are an estimated one million Turkish-speaking Turkmen in Iraq , most of them living in the north, close to the Turkish border.