Gunmen ambushed and assassinated an Iraqi deputy foreign minister as he was on the way to his Baghdad office Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said.
The assailants shot Bassam Saleh Kubba in Baghdad's Azimiyah district. He died later of his injuries, said Thamir al-Adhami, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, according to The AP.
Kubba, 60, was one of several deputy foreign ministers, and was responsible for legal issues. He was the ministry's most senior career diplomat.
He served as the acting chief of the Iraqi mission to the United Nations in New York and as the Iraqi ambassador to China. Kubba also served on the committee which ran the ministry after the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime.
He held a master's degree in international relations from St. John's University in New York.
Meanwhile, a Lebanese Foreign Ministry official said Saturday Iraqi gunmen kidnapped three Lebanese and killed one of them. Hussein Ali Alyan, a Shiite from southern Lebanon who worked in construction, was tortured and killed in "grisly circumstances" and his body dumped on a road near Baghdad, the official said, according to The AP.
Alyan was kidnapped separately from the two other abducted Lebanese, identified as Habib Samour and Roger Haddad. Haddad was released, but Samour was still held by his kidnappers, the official said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
