Baghdad - Gunmen kidnapped and killed a university professor in southern Iraq and a physician in a central city in separate incidents, police said on Friday.
Jumhour Karim Khammas, a professor at Basra University, was kidnapped and his body was found on Friday with three bullet wounds, Lieutenant Colonel Karim al-Zubaidi said.
Khammas, a Sunni Muslim and a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, was kidnapped on Thursday, said Shaker al-Basri, a spokesperson for the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group.
Khammas headed the Arabic language department at Basra University before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, but was demoted to professor shortly after.
Meanwhile, gunmen abducted Dr Hussein Al-Shamari from his clinic in the central city of Samarra on Friday, police Captain Laith Mohammed said. His body was later found with several bullet wounds, he said.
Attacks against university professors were common after Saddam's overthrow because many of them had close ties to his regime. But it was not clear if Khammas' killing was linked to tensions between Iraq's Shi'a and Sunni communities. Basra is mostly Shi'a. - Sapa-AP