Top Iraqi university official shot and killed

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A top Baghdad University official was shot to death in front of his daughter in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in the capital, police said. Nihad Mohammed al-Rawi, a Sunni Arab in his mid-50s, was killed after gunmen intercepted the car that was carrying him home, a police official said, adding that al-Rawi's daughter and two bodyguards were in the car but were not harmed. Al-Rawi, the deputy in charge of administrative affairs and head of the chemical engineering department at Iraq's main university, was the latest in a string of academics and students targeted by both sides of the sectarian divided as extremists see universities as bastions of Western, non-Islamic thought. More than 200 university professors have been killed since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Thousands have fled abroad, according to the Ministry of Higher Education.