A Libyan deputy cabinet minister was killed by gunmen on Saturday evening in the first assassination of a senior government figure in the country since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than two years ago. The deputy minister of industry, Hassan al-Droui, was hit by a spray of bullets in the former Qaddafi stronghold of Surt, which he had represented in the wartime transitional council and then in the elected Parliament. Assassinations of military and police officers, usually presumed to be the work of Islamist extremists, have been accelerating in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Darnah . But the government had usually been able to negotiate its way out of threats to central institutions or top officials, as it did with the kidnapping of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from a Tripoli hotel a few months ago. Previous attempts to assassinate senior officials had all […]