BAGHDAD, 29 March 2004 — Gunmen killed two foreign security guards, including one Briton, in an attack on their vehicle in a city in northern Iraq yesterday, authorities said.
US soldiers and Iraqi police sealed off the area in Mosul after the shooting. Witnesses saw two partly burned bodies, clad in blue clothing and flak jackets, lying beside a four-wheel drive vehicle that was on fire. One man had been shot in the head.
In London, the Foreign Office confirmed that one British national was killed. A second slain victim was not British, a spokesman said. He gave no further details.
The two men were assigned to protect foreign engineers working for General Electric Co., a spokesman for the US-led coalition said. He confirmed one was a Briton, and that the nationality of the second was unclear.
An Iraqi technician had earlier said both men were British civilians working at the Mosul East power station near the scene of the shooting.
“They were on their way to the power station in two cars when they came under fire from attackers with AK-47s (assault rifles). One vehicle was hit,” he said. Earlier, an Iraqi official said a second car carrying experts escaped the attack.
An Iraqi bystander said the gunmen had fired from a car. US forces later sealed off the area and Iraqi ambulances removed the bodies. Also yesterday, assailants detonated a bomb in Baqouba, a city northeast of Baghdad, injuring five bystanders. It was unclear whether the blast targeted a policeman who lives near the site of the explosion, or the house of a carpenter who has received threats because he has worked for American forces.
Further north, in Kirkuk, a bomb exploded at an intersection where police cars park daily. Three civilians were injured, police Col. Dashti Aziz said. As bystanders gathered after the blast, gunmen opened fire from a passing car, but there were no casualties. Police said the shooters were later apprehended.
On Saturday, rebel rockets slammed into a government building in the northern city of Mosul, killing two civilians and wounding 14 others. The rocket launcher was hidden in a wooden cart that was wheeled up to a blast wall surrounding the three-story main government building, said Mosul police Sgt. Jassim Mohammed.
Meanwhile, US administrator Paul Bremer handed over the keys of the first of Iraq’s 25 ministries to the country’s interim leadership yesterday in a ceremony aimed at highlighting the gradual handover of power by June 30.
