The sister of Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq's recently-appointed Vice President, was shot dead by gunmen today less than two weeks after the Sunni politician lost his brother to a similar attack.

Mayssun Hashemi's 4x4 car was ambushed and sprayed with bullets as she drove through Baghdad's southern Hai al-Ilam district. Television channels reported that Ms Hashemi and her bodyguard were left to die because neighbours were too scared to leave their homes to give first aid.

The assassination is the latest in a series of attacks on close family members of the Sunni political elite and came hours after Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, and Donald Rumsfeld, the embattled Defence Secretary, made an unannounced visit to meet members of the new Iraqi government in Baghdad.

Mr al-Hashemi, 60, leads the Iraqi Islamic Party and was appointed as Vice President in Nouri al-Maliki's Cabinet on Saturday. His brother, Mahmud al-Hashemi, was shot dead in eastern Baghdad on April 13. The brother of the Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq’s brother was also found dead on April 17.

In a statement broadcast yesterday he called for the insurgency to be crushed by force and denounced a video message from in which Abu Musab al-Zarqawi branded the Government illegitimate.

"We believe that the interests of Iraq demand this participation, so as to normalise the situation and impose order by force," he said.

Ziyad al-Ani, a senior member of the Islamic Party, condemned the killing and told the Associated Press that it would not prevent his party from continuing to engage in Iraq's fragile Shia-led coalition government.

Violence also flared in southern Iraq today when an army convoy was targeted with a roadside bomb near the Nasiriyah military base, killing four soldiers - three Italian and one Romanian. At least four Iraqi police officers were killed in a mortar attack on a checkpoint in Baquba, 40 miles north of the capital.

Mr al-Maliki has 30 days in which to assemble a power-sharing government, seen as a crucial step in crushing the insurgency. In the six days since he was appointed, 110 Iraqis have been found dead.

In a statement after meeting senior figures within the new administration, Ms Rice said: "The key now is to get the government up and running, to get ministers who are capable and who also will reflect the values of a national unity government, and then get about the work of dealing with the security situation, dealing with the economic situation."

Mr al-Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party is the driving force in Iraq’s Sunni-led National Accord Front, which, with 44 seats, is the biggest Sunni bloc in the country’s 275-member parliament. The Front helped mastermind the return of the country’s Sunni minority to the political process after the community boycotted January 2005 elections.

Mr al-Hashemi hit headlines recently when US journalist Jill Carroll was dropped outside his party office after three months in captivity. He later handed her over to the US military.

The group sits in a precarious position due to its apparent connections to some elements of Iraq’s Sunni-fuelled insurgency. Its members have been detained and its offices raided by the US military.

In turn, some Sunni insurgent factions like Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda group, who view the Iraqi Islamic Party as traitors, have attacked its members and bombed its offices.

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