Iraqis Kill 7 Spaniards

News, November 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

Arab News

BAGHDAD, 30 November 2003 — Iraqi guerrillas ambushed a convoy of Spanish military intelligence officers on a highway south of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least seven agents and wounding one. Television footage showed a crowd gathered after the attack, chanting slogans supporting ousted leader Saddam Hussein and kicking the bodies.

In Madrid, the Spanish Defense Ministry said coalition forces found the bodies and the wounded man at the site of the attack on a convoy near Suwayrah, 30 km from Baghdad. The group which was driving in two vehicles was on its way back to the capital, according to Spanish media.

A reporter for Sky television news said his team had arrived at the site before coalition forces and saw a small crowd of Iraqis around the bodies, chanting pro-Saddam slogans and kicking them. The team fled after the crowd turned its attention on them. Spanish radio reported that the attack was carried out with mortars and grenades. Three helicopters from the Spanish contingent were at the scene of the ambush and witnesses said that two vehicles were on fire, Spanish-language CNN+ television reported.

Spain was one of the staunchest supporters of the US-led invasion to oust Saddam earlier this year and sent 1,300 soldiers to help maintain order.

Hours after the attack, Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo convened high-ranking military officials in his office.

In previous attacks, a Spanish diplomat attached to Spain’s intelligence agency was assassinated near his residence in Baghdad on Oct. 9, and a Spanish Navy captain was killed in the truck bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19. Other partners in the US-led coalition have also been targeted. On Nov. 12, a truck bomb outside the Italian barracks in Nassiriyah killed 19 Italians and 14 others in an apparent attempt to weaken the resolve of Washington’s allies. On Thursday, insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Italian mission in Baghdad, causing damage but no injuries.

The ambush came on a day when the top US military official in Iraq said the United States suspected Al-Qaeda operatives had taken part in the long string of attacks on US and Iraqi targets, but had no conclusive evidence of involvement. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez also said some US-trained Iraqi police appeared to have planned some assaults on coalition forces. He said US military officials were concerned that some attacks on Americans had been coordinated by a few of the numerous Iraqi civilians hired by the US military, who may glean intelligence on troop movements and travels of high-ranking officers. “Clearly those are concerns we have. We try to do the vetting (of Iraqi employees) as close as we can,” Sanchez told reporters. “There have been instances when police were coordinating attacks against the coalition and against the people.”

Meanwhile, Iraq’s US-installed interim leadership held key talks on demands from the powerful Shiite religious hierarchy for immediate elections that have undermined the democratic credentials of the US-led coalition and left its plans for an accelerated transfer of power in tatters.

Top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has rejected the arcane system of indirect selection by caucus announced two weeks ago to put a caretaker government in place by June next year.

The plan criticized by Sistani also provided for the drafting of a basic law by end-February 2004 and the selection of a transitional assembly by end-May 2004 ahead of the caretaker government’s formation.

— Additional input from agencies

Madrid says 7 Spaniards killed in Iraq attack

Jordan Times, Sunday, November 30, 2003

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Seven Spanish intelligence agents were killed and one agent was wounded on Saturday in an attack on a convoy south of Baghdad, a Spanish defence ministry spokesman in Madrid said. The spokesman had no information about the eighth member of the group. A Reuters television crew at the attack scene about 45km from Baghdad filmed a burned-out vehicle surrounded with spent shell casings and scattered bits of flesh.

It was the latest guerrilla strike on a close US ally and came hours after the top military commander in Iraq said attacks against US forces had fallen sharply in recent weeks, despite figures showing November to be the deadliest month for US troops since the war began in March.

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said anti-American insurgents had struck fewer times in the past seven days than in the previous week and put the reduction down to the more aggressive tactics used by US forces.

A cameraman from Britain's Sky News television said in Baghdad after he and Sky reporter David Bowden had stumbled across the ambush on the Spaniards near Hilla: "There were three bodies on the side of the road and one in the grass island between the two sides of the highway. The lead vehicle was very burned and the second vehicle was burned.

"Iraqis on the scene said a third vehicle was used to kidnap two of the Spanish. People said they were CIA. Maybe they did not know they were Spanish. They said five others were killed and were located on the other side of the highway. Two Iraqi policemen on motorcycles drove by and did not stop at all at the scene."

Bowden said: "I got the impression it was an IED attack (improvised explosive device). It just seemed like they just waited for a... convoy to drive by and they attacked.

"There was a lot of traffic. There was one Iraqi youth standing with his foot on one of the bodies and then a child of about nine started to pretend he was kicking it.

"Some of the men were wearing chequered Arab scarves across their faces. People around the bodies were chanting 'We sacrifice our souls and blood for you Saddam (Hussein)'."

Other US allies attacked

Just over two weeks ago, 19 Italians were killed in an attack on a military police barracks in southern Iraq, the worst military disaster for Italy since World War II.

Britain, which stood beside the United States in the March 20 invasion of Iraq, has lost 20 soldiers in military action since then. A Polish army officer has also died.

Spain had earlier lost two other military men: an intelligence officer attached to the Spanish embassy gunned down in the street, and a Spanish naval officer who was among 22 people killed in a suicide bomb attack on the UN mission.

In his Baghdad news conference, Sanchez said the US military was reshaping its forces in Iraq to rotate in more mobile units and ship out heavy armour such as tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

"In the past 14 days, we have seen the daily average of engagements throughout the country decline by over 30 per cent," he said.

"And over the last seven-day period, we're down to an average of 22 engagements a day," he said, against as many as 50 a day just a couple of weeks ago. "This decline has been most significant where we have taken the fight to the enemy."

Despite the decline, however, figures from US military officials show at least 72 US soldiers died in action in November, according to a count by Reuters.

At least four others have died in non-hostile circumstances, making November the deadliest month for US forces since the war to overthrow Saddam was launched.

Heavy death toll

Since Washington declared major combat over on May 1, 185 US soldiers have been killed in action, bringing the total US military deaths — combat and noncombat — since the start of the war to 436, according to the Pentagon.

To take on guerrillas more efficiently, Sanchez said the military was kicking off a new phase of the war, Iraqi Freedom II, in which more mobile infantry would replace armour.

"We are going to change the composition of the force," he said. "We're going to have additional mobility... with the right mix of heavy and light."

US President George W. Bush in his weekly radio address on Saturday expressed sympathy for the families of the some 130,000 US troops in Iraq and urged Americans to help their families by doing volunteer work such as preparing care packages and collecting gifts for baby showers for expectant wives.

Bush made a surprise flying visit to the US base at Baghdad's heavily guarded airport for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

But his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said it was a White House aide — not Bush himself — who suggested the trip.

With the president safely back at his Crawford ranch in Texas, White House supporters seized on the 2-1/2 hour visit as a public relations coup that could boost troop morale and Republican fund raising ahead of his campaign for reelection next year.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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