baghdad -- A roadside bomb killed the governor of Muthanna province Monday, and armed men in a fleet of sport utility vehicles kidnapped a senior government official on a busy Baghdad street.
The attack on the governor, the second provincial leader to be slain in little more than a week, came amid continued fighting between Shiite Muslim groups competing for dominance in southern Iraq.
The powerful bomb that killed Mohammed Ali Hassani, his driver and a bodyguard struck only the Muthanna governor's armored Land Cruiser in a long motorcade traveling toward the provincial capital of Samawah. That precision suggested that a remote-controlled device was used to target the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council politician.
Khalil Jalil Hamza, governor of neighboring Qadisiya province and a fellow supreme council member, was killed in a similar fashion Aug. 11, stirring suspicions that both bombings were carried out by militiamen loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.
Sadr's Al Mahdi militia and the supreme council's armed Badr Organization have been battling for control of Iraq's oil-rich southern provinces as local elections, set for 2008, approach.
The twin strikes against the governors testified to the struggle for power and riches plaguing Iraq and that struggle's potential to nullify any security improvements achieved by U.S. and Iraqi forces trying to suppress rogue militias and insurgents.
Sunni Arab extremists were suspected in the afternoon kidnapping in Baghdad of Samir Salim Attar, the deputy minister for science and technology. He and five bodyguards were taken by armed men who used at least eight SUVs to intercept Attar's heavily defended government convoy.
A week ago, five senior officials of the Oil Ministry were kidnapped by dozens of gunmen posing as security troops. Abductions by Sunni and Shiite adversaries often end in execution of the hostages rather than negotiations for their release.
Monday's violence promised to engender more. Hassani's son Ahmed blamed Sadr's militia and vowed to take revenge, as did a leader from the slain governor's Bu Hassan tribe.
"We will not stand by watching. We will take our revenge after the three-day mourning period," said Abu Haider, the tribal leader.
The assassinations and kidnappings have coincided with a burst of attacks in Baghdad and central Iraq that have killed dozens of civilians in recent days. On Monday, five people died in a car bombing in the capital's Sadr City neighborhood. A motorcycle bomb killed two Iraqis at central Baghdad's Shorja Market.
