Gunmen shot dead a top Iraqi official working with the ministry of culture on a highway in central Baghdad on Saturday, security officials told AFP.
Kamel Shiya Abdallah, an adviser to the ministry, was in his car when gunmen opened fire on him and his driver at around 3pm (1200 GMT) as they sped past, the officials said.
"The gunmen used guns that had silencers. Abdallah was alive when he was brought to the hospital but he later died," a security official with the interior ministry said, adding that the driver was wounded in the attack.
Abdallah, 57, was a well-known critic on cultural issues and was the author of several articles in Iraqi journals.
Abdallah, who holds a diplomacy in philosophy, was a member of the political bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party and also one of the editors of New Culture, the magazine of the party.
He had left Iraq during the 1980's to Belgium and returned after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.