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| Monday, 29 March 2004 |
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Gunmen kill Briton and Canadian in ambush in Iraq MOSUL, Iraq, March 28 (Reuters) - Guerrillas shot dead a British and a Canadian civilian and fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. armoured vehicle in a surge of attacks in the increasingly lawless Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday. In another incident in the city, gunmen opened fire from a car at a U.S. patrol, wounding two American military police, soldiers at the scene said. U.S. troops returned fire, killing all four people in the car. Iraqi police found rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47 assault rifles in the vehicle. Security has deteriorated sharply in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, in recent weeks, further complicating U.S. efforts for an orderly transfer of power to Iraqis in July. Earlier this month four U.S. missionaries were shot dead in an ambush in the city. Witnesses said the British and Canadian civilians were ambushed on their way to work at the Mosul East power station. "They were on their way to the power station in two cars when they came under fire from attackers with AK-47s. One vehicle was hit," said an Iraqi technician. Officials in Britain and Canada confirmed the nationalities of the victims. The bodies of the two men, wearing blue flak jackets, lay in the road beside their burned-out vehicle long after it was ambushed in an eastern part of the city. In another attack, insurgents fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. Stryker military vehicle on patrol in a western district, setting it on fire, witnesses said. More blasts shook the Stryker, as its fuel tanks caught fire, but a U.S. military spokesman said there were no casualties. Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Piek of Task Force Olympia said the commander and driver of the vehicle had jumped out. Other soldiers in the unit were patrolling on foot. Earlier two employees of the U.S.-run Iraqi Media Network were wounded in a drive-by shooting, a grenade attack wounded a policeman in the city centre and a rocket, apparently aimed at the city hall, hit a nearby boys school, but failed to explode. Two people were killed and 13 wounded in a rocket attack on the city hall on Saturday. CHILDREN WOUNDED Elsewhere, a bomb wounded three children on their way to school and two other civilians on Sunday when it exploded outside the home of an Iraqi contractor working for the U.S.-led authorities near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad. At Baquba hospital, two girls and a boy lay in a stark ward, bandages on their limbs and heads, faces caked with blood. Insurgents have increasingly attacked people seen as cooperating with the U.S.-led occupiers, including members of the fledgling Iraqi security forces. In the northern city of Kirkuk, two people were wounded when a bomb exploded near a checkpoint on Sunday, police said. U.S. officials have said they expect guerrillas to intensify attacks in the run-up to a June 30 handover of power to an interim Iraqi government, whose main task will be to prepare for elections scheduled to take place in early 2005. A U.N. team of electoral experts arrived in Iraq on Friday to advise on organising the polls. Washington's hopes of winning support for its political plans have been dented by opposition from Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani, hugely influential with Iraq's 60 percent Shi'ite majority, says a U.S.-backed interim constitution signed by the Iraqi Governing Council this month is flawed and undemocratic. |
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