Christian student gunned down in Iraq's Mosul

A gunman emerged from a car in the north of the city and fired at the students with an automatic weapon, according to a police officer.

MOSUL, February 16, 2010 (AFP) - A Christian student was shot dead and another wounded in Mosul on Tuesday, taking to three the number of Christians killed in the restive northern city in as many days, Iraqi police said.

A gunman emerged from a car in the north of the city and fired at the students with an automatic weapon, according to a police officer who did not want to be named. The shooter fled together with two other men in the car.

The student could not immediately be identified.

Also in Mosul on Tuesday, two policemen were killed and nine other people wounded as a car bomb hit a police forensics bureau, emergency services said.

Tuesday's murder of the student comes shortly after gunmen in Mosul killed two shop owners from Iraq's Christian minority in separate attacks, prompting community leaders to criticise the security forces.

Greengrocer Fatukhi Munir, an Assyrian Catholic, was gunned down inside his shop in a drive-by shooting late on Monday, and armed assailants killed Rayan Salem Elias, a Chaldean Christian, outside his home on Sunday.

"The Christian minority has become an issue in the elections, as it always is before the elections," said Hazem Girgis, a deacon at an Orthodox church in the town centre.

"Two Christians have been killed since the start of the campaign," which opened on Friday, said Girgis. "We are terrified... and the security forces are not able to offer us any security."

Attacks occur on a regular basis in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province, which is among Iraq's most violent areas.

Human Rights Watch warned in November that minorities including Christians in the north were the collateral victims of a conflict between Arabs and Kurds over who controls Iraq's disputed northern provinces.

In late 2008, a systematic campaign of killings and targeted violence killed 40 Christians and saw more than 12,000 others flee Mosul.

The March 7 parliamentary election is seen as a key test of reconciliation in Iraq, which has been wracked by sectarian hostilities since late dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted in the 2003 US-led invasion.