Last Throes.

From Aljazeera
Iraq vice-president's sister shot dead
Thursday 27 April 2006 6:00 AM GMT
(click for full article)

The sister of Tareq al-Hashemi, Iraq's vice-president, has been shot dead in a southern Baghdad neighbourhood.

An interior ministry official said Mayssun al-Hashemi was travelling in her car in the al-Ilam neighbourhood when "gunmen ambushed her car and sprayed it with bullets, killing her and her driver".

The television station of al-Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party interrupted its programming to show picture's of her bulletriddled and blood-stained mini-bus.

The vehicle had been blocked by a car and gunmen then swarmed the mini-bus and fired 32 shots at al-Hashemi's sister and her driver, said a station announcer.

An Iraqi Islamic party official said no one in the neighbourhood came forward to provide medical care to the victims out of fear.

Earlier this month, al-Hashemi's brother, Mahmud, was shot dead in Baghdad.

Also on Thursday, four soldiers - three Italians and one Romanian - were killed when a bomb hit their convoy in the southern city of Nasiriya.