(dpa) - An Iraqi academic with New Zealand nationality was killed by gunmen in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police said Wednesday.
Abdel-Sattar Taher Sharif, a professor at Kirkuk University, was shot dead by assailants in the Shirwah district, Major-General Sarhad Qadir from the local police told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Sharif, a 74-year-old Iraqi Kurd, had lived in New Zealand where he adopted the country's nationality.
He served as a labour minister in Iraq in the mid 1970s and worked as an academic in several Iraqi universities.
The attack spotlights the ongoing assault on Iraqi academics and professionals since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
At least 40 per cent of Iraqi academics fled the country in the three years after the invasion, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
Other professionals, mainly wealthy doctors, have been targeted for abductions to exort money.