Gunmen killed four US relief workers affiliated with a Christian evangelical church and an Iraqi woman working as a translator for the US army as insurgents made civilians their target of choice.
The top US commander on the ground, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, downplayed on Tuesday the impact of Spanish troops leaving Iraq after the Spanish prime minister-elect threatened to pull out his nation's forces by June 30.
Amidst violence and political machinations, US pro-consul in Iraq Paul Bremer visited Halabja on the anniversary of the gassing there of 5,000 Kurds by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1988.
Four American aid workers with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board were killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting in Mosul late Monday, the US military and the board said.
And on Tuesday morning an Iraqi female translator, working with the US army in Mosul, was shot dead in her car, police said.
The US military initially reported three deaths in Monday night's road ambush, but one of the two Americans wounded later succumbed to injuries.
"One of the wounded people died overnight at approximately 3:30 am (1230 GMT) en route by military aircraft from the US Army combat support hospital in Mosul to the combat support hospital in Baghdad," the military said.
Assailants had raked the aid workers' four-wheel drive with Kalashnikov fire in eastern Mosul.
They had been in the Mosul area delivering relief items at the time of the shooting, the military said.
Police in Mosul said three women and two men had been driving when a vehicle sped up alongside and the occupants opened fire before speeding off.
Meanwhile, Sanchez said on Tuesday coalition forces would not be set back if Spain withdrew its 1,300 troops from Iraq.
"... If that is their decision, we can adapt readily to compensate for the loss of those forces," Sanchez told reporters in Tikrit.
On a somber note, US civil administrator Paul Bremer visited Halabja on Tuesday on the anniversary of the gassing there of 5,000 Kurds by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1988.
Bremer, accompanied by the British representative to Iraq Sir Jeremy Greenstock, paid tributes to those killed in the attack that came to symbolise Saddam's barbaric excesses. Bremer told mourners the gassing was proof of evil in the world and one of the reasons why the United States vanquished Saddam.
Meanwhile, two German engineers and three Iraqis were killed when their car came under fire near Karbala on Tuesday, Iraqi police said.
German television ZDF reported earlier that two Germans, both hydraulic engineering specialists, and two Iraqis were killed.
Unknown assailants attacked the car of the five men in Jorf al-Sakhr, north of Karbala, 110km from Baghdad, a police spokesman said.
A coalition official, contacted by AFP in Baghdad, confirmed having received reports that two German engineers were killed, but had no details on the circumstances of the attack.
FIRST DUTCH PERSON KILLED: One of two Western civilians shot dead south of Baghdad on Tuesday was Dutch, rather than German as earlier reported, and was the first Dutch citizen to die in Iraq since the war, the Dutch government said on Tuesday.
Comments
Comments are closed.