GUNMEN assassinated an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's office today, an interior ministry official and police sources said. They said Wael Rubaie and his driver were killed, in the latest of a series of assassinations of officials by insurgents who have stepped up attacks since a new government was announced last month. Rubaie and his driver were shot as they drove through the Mansour district of Baghdad. Meanwhile, a suicide truck bomb exploded today outside the mayor's office in the Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu south of the oil city of Kirkuk, killing at least five people and wounding 18, police said. Among the dead was the brother of a senior official in one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, police said.
The official, Mohammed Mahmoud Jigareti, was wounded in the blast. Both men had been in a car that was entering the mayor's office compound when the bomber struck. Tuz Khurmatu is an ethnically mixed town with a large population of Kurds and Turkmen.