SENIOR ARMENIAN TAX OFFICIAL KILLED IN BOMBING IN YEREVAN

AP Worldstream
Sep 06, 2006

A senior Armenian tax official was killed Wednesday by a bomb that
detonated as he was getting into a car, city police said.

Shagen Ovasepian, head of the operations department of the State Tax
Service, died of blood loss after the blast, which occurred around
9:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) as he sat down in his car, Yerevan city police
said in a statement. His driver suffered light shrapnel wounds.

In a separate incident, the editor of an opposition newspaper said he
was attacked and beaten by unknown assailants near his home Wednesday
morning.

Ovannes Galadzhyan, of the newspaper Iravunk, said he received a
phone call a few days earlier from people warning that they would
break his legs.

"Since I have no personal enemies, I can communicate that this attack
was connected with my professional duties," he said.

Organized crime is widespread in this poor, former Soviet republic,
and gang-related killings are common. As well, Armenian politics are
tense and occasionally violent.

In 1999, gunmen burst into parliament and killed the prime minister,
parliament speaker and six other officials and lawmakers.