Top Iraqi finance aide shot, killed in Baghdad

updated 3:29 p.m. ET Nov. 4, 2007

BAGHDAD - Two carloads of gunmen ambushed a top aide to Iraq's Finance Ministry on Sunday in Baghdad, killing him and his driver, police said. The two were among 15 people killed or found dead in Iraq.

The Finance Ministry had no immediate comment about the attack on Qutaiba Badir al-Din Mohammed, a Sunni adviser to Iraq's finance minister.

Violence claimed the lives of 10 Iraqis in Diyala, the troubled province northeast of Baghdad. Police said the victims included an Iraqi soldier, a policeman and an 8-year-old child, all killed separately.

The soldier died when gunmen attacked his patrol in Khalis, a mostly Shiite town 50 miles north of the capital, police said. Three other soldiers were wounded in the attack, they said.

The child died after seven mortar rounds landed on a residential area in the same town at sunrise, police said. A woman was also wounded by the barrage. And the policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting in nearby Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said.

Meanwhile, police said clashes broke out in Buhriz, a suburb of Diyala's provincial capital, Baqouba. Policemen backed by members of the 1920s Revolution Brigades, a Sunni former insurgent group, battled gunmen and seized weapons and ammunition, they said. Four people were killed, including a 1920s member, police said.

Later, a civilian was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baqouba, and a severed head was found dumped at a farm nearby, police said.

Another body was found floating in a drainage ditch in the Tahrir area, in a southern part of the city, they said.

Farther west, a parked car bomb exploded in a commercial area in central Tikrit, killing three people including a 6-year-old boy, police said.

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