BAGHDAD, Nov 13: Gunmen have killed the mayor of a Baghdad suburb where violence has registered an increase, witnesses said on Saturday.

Nouri al Rubaie was shot on Friday while he was walking with his family in a busy street of the southern Abu Dashir district, part of the religiously mixed Dora region of Baghdad, they said.

Rubaie was the successor of a mayor who was also killed earlier this year.

Scores of people have been killed in Dora since the US-led invasion, including nine Christians in a minivan in September and a Shia Imam last month.

US and Iraqi forces on Thursday surrounded a Baghdad mosque which had been renamed after a Salafi theologian and arrested Sheikh Mehdi al Sumaid'i, a Salafi leader.-Reuters