Gunmen today assassinated the governor of Baghdad, police officials said.

Ali Al-Haidari, who was the target of an assassination attempt last year that killed two of his bodyguards, was shot dead while in his car in Baghdad’s northern neighbourhood of Hurriyah.

Police said al-Haidari left his house in the western al-Jama’a neighbourhood and when he arrived in Hurriyah gunmen riddled his car with bullets killing him instantly.

Iraq’s insurgents have repeatedly targeted government officials around the country. Al-Haidari was the highest-ranking since the former president of the now defunct Governing Council, Abdel-Zahraa Othman, better known as Izzadine Saleem, was assassinated in May.

Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, speaking in Thailand where he is visiting some of the areas devastated by the Indian Ocean earthquake, said today: "I was very sad to hear of the assassination of the mayor of Baghdad. Once again it shows that there are murderers and terrorists, there are former regime elements in Iraq that don't want to see an election, that don't want to see the people of Iraq choose their own leadership. They want to go back to the past. They want to go back to the tyranny of Saddam Hussein's regime and that's not going to happen. The Iraqi people don't want it to happen.

"The Iraqi government is determined to fight this urgency and you can be sure the coalition will do everything it can to fight the insurgency so that the Iraqi people can have a successful election at the end of the month."

In a separate attack in Baghdad today, a truck packed with explosives detonated near an Iraqi National Guards barracks in the west of the city, killing ten people and wounding 50, police said.

A suicide driver rammed the truck at an Iraqi police checkpoint which was also near an entrance of the Green Zone, the fortified home of the American Embassy and headquarters of the interim Iraqi government. The barracks serves as a recruiting centre for the paramilitary guards who have been repeatedly targeted by insurgents who are trying to derail this month’s parliamentary elections.

The explosion occurred not far from the site of Monday’s explosion in front of Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s party headquarters that killed two police officers and one civilian and injured 25 other Iraqis.

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