American troops opened fire and killed a passenger in a car in central Iraq after the vehicle failed to heed warnings to keep its distance from a military convoy, the US military says.
"In Baquba, a passenger in a vehicle was mortally wounded after the driver of the vehicle failed to respond to repeated warning signals from a convoy," a statement on Tuesday said.
A soldier opened fire after the car drove towards the convoy at an intersection despite the warnings, the military said, adding the driver of the vehicle was unharmed.
The incident marked the second shooting of an Iraqi civilian by US forces in less than week after US soldiers opened fire and critically wounded a newly-wed Iraqi female television producer in Baghdad on January 1.
The US military said 25-year-old Hadeel Emad failed to heed warnings from American soldiers and was behaving "erratically".
Colleagues said the producer had failed to heed warning shots because she had impaired hearing.
Also on Tuesday, gunmen killed a member of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's political party in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Kirkuk, police officials said.
Subhi Hassan, who handles political relations for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and a bodyguard were killed on Monday after unidentified gunmen chased down their car after it passed through a checkpoint, said Police Brigadier Ahmed Hawandi.
A third person in the car was wounded, Hawandi said, adding Iraqi police were investigating the shooting.
The shooting is the latest in a spate of killings that appear to be politically motivated and come in advance of the January 31 Iraq-wide provincial elections.
Although violence is down 80 per cent nationwide since early this year, US officials say the security situation remains tenuous, and some areas of the country are still dangerous.
US and Iraqi officials hope the elections will redress problems created by the last regional balloting in January 2005, when Sunnis largely stayed away from the polls.
As a result, Kurds and Shi'ites won a disproportionate share of power, and Iraqi and US military officials have expressed concern of a possible increase in violence prior to the election and after the balloting.
Last month, two political candidates in southern Basra were killed by unidentified gunmen and another was wounded in separate incidents. Earlier in December, Iraqi police said attackers stormed a home in Kirkuk and decapitated the leader of the women's league of the Kurdish Communist Party after breaking into her home.
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