A Top Iraqi Official’s Brother Is Killed

BAGHDAD â€”  Gunmen killed the brother of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim vice president Sunday in the capital, and a top Trade Ministry official escaped assassination in another part of the city. A U.S. Marine died of injuries from a bombing, and 11 bodies were found near Baghdad.

Ghalib Abdul Mehdi, brother of Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, 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. Ghalib Abdul Mehdi was en route to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari’s office, where he served as an advisor, aides to the vice president said.

Later Sunday, a top official in the Trade Ministry, Qais Dawood Hasan, was wounded and two of his bodyguards were killed when gunmen ambushed their convoy in the upscale Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.

The U.S. military announced Sunday that a Marine had died of injuries suffered the day before in a roadside bombing near Baghdad. At least 2,016 American military personnel have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A statement attributed to the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq posted on an Islamist website claimed responsibility for the slaying of the vice president’s brother. The claim could not be verified.

Late Sunday, police found the bodies of 11 unidentified men -- blindfolded, hands bound and with gunshots to the head -- in a village near Baghdad where Sunnis and Shiites clashed three days ago. Fourteen Shiite militiamen and a policeman were killed then.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Saturday’s suicide bombing near Baqubah north of Baghdad rose to 30, a hospital official said; 41 people remained hospitalized.