Baghdad - The coach of the Iraqi national karate team was killed on Friday by gunmen in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, according to a police source.

The source told the German Press Agency dpa that the gunmen escaped right after they shot Ezzat Abdullah to death when he was near his house in al-Zohour district, eastern Mosul.

Mosul and its environs, roughly 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, is among the most ethnically and religiously diverse areas of Iraq.

Despite successive security pushes that police say have netted hundreds of suspected insurgents, the city and the surrounding countryside continue to see deadly, near- daily attacks against civilians and Iraqi security forces.

Many well-known Iraqi figures such as professors and athletes were killed while others went missing during the height of the violence in country between the 2003 US-led invasion and 2006.(dpa)