Detailed Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Q: Hindus on Tuesday celebrated the start of the harvest season in the country -- known as Pongal in the south and Makar Sankranti in the north. 
  
 * Islamist militants suspected 
  
 * Political transition still stalled, two years after war 
  
 * Oil production creeping back as western protests end (Adds update on El Sharara production) 
  
 By Ghaith Shennib 
  
 TRIPOLI, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Gunmen killed Libya's deputy industry minister as he drove home from a shopping trip in the city of Sirte late on Saturday, in an attack officials blamed on hardline Islamist militants. 
  
 Libya is still plagued by violence and assassinations more than two years after civil war ousted Muammar Gaddafi. Militants, militias and former rebels often resort to force to impose demands on the fragile government. 
  
 The minister, Hassan al-Drowi, was shot several times, a senior security official said, asking not to be identified. 
  
 "They opened fire from another car while he was driving, he was shot multiple times," the official said. 
  
 "Later, they found explosives attached to his car. The theory is, the bomb failed, so they shot him instead." 
  
 The official blamed Islamist militants who have been trying to extend their influence in the coastal city of Sirte, which has been more stable recently than the capital Tripoli or the major eastern city of Benghazi. 
  
 Sirte was the last bastion of Gaddafi loyalists in the war, and he was killed there on Oct. 20, 2011. 
  
 Prime Minister Ali Zeidan's central government, weakened by infighting and with only nascent armed forces, is struggling to wrest control back from areas where militias are still dominant. 
  
 PORT PROTESTS 
  
 Libya's General National Congress and its members have not completed key parts of the country's transition to democracy, with secular parties and Islamists deadlocked over the way ahead. 
  
 The new constitution is unfinished, and militias who once helped fight Gaddafi have refused to disarm, claiming the central government is too weak to provide security and stability. 
  
 In Benghazi, the armed forces have been fighting to limit the influence of Ansar al-Sharia, a hardline Islamist group Washington last week designated a terrorist organisation. 
  
 Armed protesters control key oil terminal ports in the east of the country, demanding more political autonomy and a greater share of the OPEC country's petroleum wealth. 
  
 Last week, authorities said the navy had opened fire to turn away a tanker that had approached to illegally load crude at one of the ports in the hands of the protesters, in what the government said was a attempt to bypass its control. 
  
 Protests at three eastern ports, which usually account for around 600,000 bpd of oil exports, have slashed Libya's oil shipments. Exports stood at 1.4 million barrels per day last summer. 
  
 Since protests over the western El-Sharara oilfield ended this month, total crude production has climbed back to around 650,000 bpd, with 510,000 bpd exported and the rest feeding two Libyan refineries, Libya's oil minister said last week. 
  
 A spokesman for the state-run National Oil Corp. said current production at El-Sharara was at 328,000 bpd, with around 35,000 bpd still off-line because 22 of the field's wells still faced technical problems due to the protests there. (Reporting by Ghaith Shennib; writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Andrew Roche) ||||| TRIPOLI, Libya — 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 failed. 
  
 Mr. Droui’s death is also the latest sign that the pattern of assassinations may be spreading westward; Surt sits roughly midway between Benghazi and Tripoli on the coastal road. 
  
 Continue reading the main story Mediterranean Sea TUNISIA Darnah Tripoli Benghazi Surt EGYPT ALGERIA LIBYA 200 miles 
  
 Possible motives for the killing include a desire for revenge by Qaddafi loyalists or antagonism toward the secular transitional government by Islamist extremists. Mr. Droui had joined the rebel’s transitional council when most of Surt, his hometown, remained stalwart in its support of Colonel Qaddafi, another son of the city. In the final weeks of the revolt against him, Surt was the site of some of the most horrific violence in the conflict, including at least one massacre of dozens of unarmed Qaddafi supporters, as well as the assassination and disfigurement of the colonel himself. 
  
 Since then, however, Surt has joined Benghazi and Darnah as theaters of operation for armed Islamist extremists. Some of the fighters from neighboring cities who occupied the city at the end of the rebellion reorganized themselves into the core of a militant group, Ansar al-Shariah of Surt, an independent organization that shares its name with counterparts in Benghazi, Darnah and Tunisia. (Ansar al-Shariah means supporters of Islamic law.) 
  
 Tensions are rising across the country ahead of elections for an assembly to draft a new constitution. Mr. Zeidan recently survived a no-confidence vote by the transitional Parliament, which would have required a two-thirds majority, and he promised to replace members of his cabinet. But much of the public has lost trust in Parliament, whose members were elected in 2012 but have struggled to exercise authority over the country. Parliament once planned to transfer power to a new elected body by this February, but there is little chance of meeting that deadline. 
  
 Regional groups in eastern Libya and tribal groups in the south and west have cut off or disrupted supplies of oil and gas. And over the last two days, fighting has erupted between rival tribes competing for control of smuggling routes around the southern city of Sabha; dozens have been killed so far. 
  
 Optimists, however, point to plans by several Western nations, including the United States, to train recruits for a professional Libyan military that may help the government control the fractious local militias that have proliferated across the country. And Western diplomats in Tripoli say they hope that the elections for a 60-member panel to draft a constitution will revive momentum toward the formation of a new Libyan state. No date has been set for the voting. |||||
A:
Since Moammar Gadhafi was ousted more than two years ago, assassinations have taken the lives of low-level government employees, activists, clerics, and security officials—but, as of two days ago, no top government officials. That ended Saturday, when Libyan Deputy Minister of Industry Hassan Drouai was shot numerous times as he drove home after shopping in the city of Sirte. "Later, they found explosives attached to his car," a security official tells Reuters. "The theory is, the bomb failed, so they shot him instead." The attack has been pinned on hardline Islamist militants, perhaps angered by the country's secular transitional government; Drouai joined the National Transitional Council at a time when most of his hometown of Sirte backed another hometown boy: Gadhafi. And it's being seem as a gloomy development in the increasingly unstable country. The New York Times reports that the government had typically been able to negotiate an end to threats against its senior officials (as in this case). Further, gunmen have increasingly been targeting military and police in cities in the country's east, like Benghazi and Darnah. The Times sees Drouai's death as "the latest sign that the pattern of assassinations may be spreading westward," noting that Sirte sits to the west of Benghazi, on the way to Tripoli.