BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed the brother of Iraq's Shiite vice president Sunday and a top trade ministry official escaped assassination in another part of the capital, while the death toll in a major truck bombing the day before in Huweder rose to 30. A U.S. Marine was fatally injured in another bombing.
Ghalib Abdul-Mahdi, brother of Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, died along with his driver when a vehicle pulled alongside their car on bustling Palestine Street about 7:45 a.m. and gunmen inside opened fire.
Later Sunday, a top official in the Ministry of Trade, Qais Dawood Hasan, was wounded and two of his bodyguards were killed when gunmen ambushed their convoy in the Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.
The U.S. command also said Sunday that a Marine died of injuries suffered the day before in a bombing near Baghdad.
Late Sunday, police found the bodies of 11 unidentified men - blindfolded, hands bound and with gunshots in the head - in a village near Baghdad where Sunnis and Shiites clashed three days ago.
Hurricane Beta hits central Nicaragua
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Hurricane Beta swirled onto Nicaragua's central Caribbean coast Sunday as a Category 2 storm before weakening to a tropical storm. Beta was expected to weaken to a tropical depression overnight. No deaths or injuries were immediately reported, but officials believed about 10 people were missing.
Elsewhere ...
IVORY COAST: Security forces in Ivory Coast fired into the air and hurled tear gas canisters Sunday at thousands of unarmed opposition militants protesting a bitterly disputed one-year extension of President Laurent Gbagbo's mandate. Elections were to be held Sunday but Gbagbo canceled the vote, saying the civil war-riven country isn't ready.
TANZANIA: Crucial regional elections turned violent Sunday as police and the ruling party's militia engaged in running clashes with opposition supporters in semiautonomous Zanzibar. The election was seen as a test of whether Western-style democracy can work in this devoutly Muslim part of East Africa. The last two elections also were tainted by violence and charges of fraud.
