Senior oil official shot dead by gunmen in Iraq's Kirkuk

Unidentified gunmen on Monday shot dead a senior Iraqi oil official in the ethnically mix city of Kirkuk, just over a month after gunmen shot dead another senior oil official, a local police source told Xinhua.

Saad Ali Hussein, head of oil pipelines department in the state-owned North Oil Company (NOC), and his driver were killed when gunmen opened fire on their sport utility vehicle while driving near the town of Yaiyji in west of the city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The assassination of the official is the second in Kirkuk province as unknown gunmen shot dead NOC head of operations Saad Hassan al-Karbalaie on June 28 while he was leaving his office.

The ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk is part of the disputed areas claimed by the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkomans.

The Kurds want to incorporate the areas on the edge of their Kurdistan region, but their move is fiercely opposed by Baghdad government.

Iraq has been witnessing some of the worst violence in years. Terrorism and violence have left 14,136 civilians killed and 29,189 others wounded in the armed conflict in Iraq since Jan. 1, 2014 to the end of April 2015, according to latest United Nations report.