BAGHDAD, July 18 (Xinhuanet) -- People in Iraq's southern city of Basra have buried Monday a university professor who was assassinated by unknown gunmen, police said.

    Alaa Dawoud Salman, a Sunni and a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, was shot dead late on Sunday in Ashar neighborhood in central Basra, the police said.

    Salman was a professor of history and head of the history department at the Basra University during Saddam's rule until the fall of the Baath regime in April 2003.

    It was not clear whether Salman was killed on sectarian motives,as tensions escalated between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities in Basra, some 550 km south of Baghdad. Enditem