A university professor in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was murdered near her home, police said, in the latest incident in a string of attacks targeting intellectuals in the city, dpa reported.

Police did not release the woman's name, but said only that she was a professor of law and that she had been fatally shot near her home in the al-Intissar district of western Mosul.

Last month, Ahmed Murad Shehab, a professor in Mosul University's Faculty of Administration and Economics, was fatally shot in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of al-Nur, on Mosul's left bank.

UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said that more than 200 academics were killed between the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 until 2006, while hundreds more went missing or have been driven into exile.

Many others have stopped teaching and researching, in order to protect themselves and their families.

However, as violence dropped sharply across the war-torn country, the number of scholars assassinated decreased as well.