BAGHDAD, June 3: Gunmen killed one Russian embassy employee and kidnapped four others in Baghdad on Saturday, in the latest attack on foreigners in the lawless capital.

A car bomb in the southern city of Basra killed at least 27 people, hospital sources said, three days after new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced a security crackdown there.

North of Baghdad, gunmen killed six Iraqi policemen in an attack on a checkpoint in the town of Baquba, in a religiously mixed and volatile area.

The Basra blast was one of the worst attacks in the oil-rich city, which had been relatively free of the carnage in Baghdad and other places.

The violence was yet another reminder of the challenges that Mr Maliki, a tough-talking Shia Islamist, faces in delivering on his pledge to restore stability in Iraq.

Key to that will be the naming of non-sectarian interior and defence ministers who can quell communal violence, after the two jobs remained empty due to wrangling when Mr Maliki’s government took office two weeks ago.

Government sources said leaders were close to a deal to present to parliament on Sunday former Shia army officer Farouk al-Araji for interior minister and a Sunni army commander, Gen Abdel Qader Jassim, for defence minister.

They will have to deal with violence such as the bomb blast in Basra, where Mr Maliki imposed a one-month state of emergency to tackle criminal gangs and Shia factions whose feuding threatens crucial oil exports.

DIPLOMATS TARGETED: Diplomats and other foreigners in Iraq have often been targeted in kidnappings and killings in the last three years.