Gunmen shot dead a senior employee of Iraq's state-run North Oil Company (NOC) on Monday, the third company official to be killed in the past four months, police and sources within the company said, according to Reuters. Deputy inspector-general Hassan Salim and three other employees were driving to their office in the northern oil city of Kirkuk when assailants in a speeding car sprayed their minibus with bullets. Salim and another employee were killed instantly and the two other passengers were seriously wounded, police sources said.
