Sister of Iraqi vice-president killed in drive-by shooting

SISTER of Iraq’s new Sunni Arab vice-president was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad yesterday, a day after the politician called for the Sunni-dominated insurgency to be crushed by force.

Meanwhile, in southern Iraq, a bomb hit an Italian military convoy, killing four soldiers three Italians and a Romanian and seriously injuring another passenger, officials in Rome said.

The bomb struck the convoy near an Italian military base in Nasiriyah, a heavily Shi'ite city 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, said local Iraqi government spokesman Haidr Radhi.

Elsewhere, a US jet fired two missiles at insurgent positions in Ramadi. Fighting also broke out north-east of Baghdad between Iraqi forces and insurgents, killing several Iraqi policemen and civilians.

Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite hard-liner recently tapped as Iraq's prime minister, is trying to form a national unity government aimed at stopping a wave of sectarian violence.

Mr al-Maliki has 30 days to assemble a Cabinet from divided Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish parties. The most contentious question will be filling key ministries that control security forces amid demands to purge them of militias blamed for the rise in bloodshed.

Mayson Ahmed Bakir al-Hashimi, 60, whose brother, Tariq al-Hashimi, was appointed by parliament as vice president on Saturday, was killed by gunmen in a sedan as she left her southwestern Baghdad home with her bodyguard, said police Captain Jamel Hussein. The bodyguard also died.

It was the second recent killing in Tariq al-Hashimi's immediate family. On April 13, his brother, Mahmoud al-Hashimi, was shot while driving in a mostly Shi'ite area of eastern Baghdad.

Mayson al-Hashimi had worked on the government's audit commission and was married with two grown children.

The television station Baghdad, owned by the vice president's Iraqi Islamic Party, showed family photos of her wearing an orange headscarf and footage of her bullet-riddled white SUV, while playing mournful music.

"What astonished us is that they targeted a woman. This shows how wicked the attackers are," Ziyad al-Ani, a senior official in the Iraqi Islamic Party, said.

On Wednesday, Tariq al-Hashimi called for Iraq's insurgency to be put down by force. Shi'ites had demanded that Sunni officials make such a statement to demonstrate their commitment to building a democratic system.

At least 141 Iraqis have been killed in insurgency or sectarian-related violence since Mr al-Maliki was picked as prime minister.