BAGHDAD, 8 March 2005 — US troops in Iraq came under renewed pressure yesterday when Bulgaria said one of its soldiers was killed in US friendly fire the same day an Italian intelligence agent rescuing a hostage was shot dead by American troops.
Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov said an investigation into the death of the Bulgarian soldier showed he was probably accidentally killed by American troops.
“Someone started shooting at our patrol from the west, and in the same direction, 150 meters away, there was a unit from the US Army,” he told a news conference. “The result gives us enough grounds to believe the death of rifleman Gurdi Gurdev was caused by friendly fire.”
Svinarov said the Bulgarian Army’s chief of staff had written to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, asking for an investigation.
He was confirming an anonymous claim posted on a Bulgarian Army website earlier asserting the soldier had been killed by US military fire.
US military gunfire was also responsible Friday for killing secret agent Nicola Calipari, as he was escorting freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport on way to Rome. Sgrena and two other agents were injured when a US patrol near Baghdad opened fire on the convoy.
The White House rejected Sgrena’s suggestion that she was targeted by the US troops. “I think it’s absurd to make any such suggestion that our men and women in uniform deliberately targeted innocent civilians. That’s just absurd,” said spokesman Scott McClellan.
He said the road to the airport “is one of the most dangerous roads in Iraq”, plagued by suicide bombings and other attacks, and that forces often had to make “split-second decisions to protect their own security”.
He said President George W. Bush considered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a good friend and has assured him there would be a full investigation into the incident.
Iraq’s government, yet to be formed, faces an uphill battle to rein in violence. In Balad, north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside an army officer’s house, killing at least 12 people, hospital officials and police said.
In the nearby town of Baquba, insurgents attacked soldiers and police with a suicide bomb, mortars and land mines, killing at least 10 people. Al Qaeda’s wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian militant Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility.
“The Mujahedeen ambushed a unit of the apostate guards in Baquba... and a brave lion carried out an attack on the riffraff and turned them into scattered fragments,” Al-Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq said in an Internet statement.
Police in Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shiite town 65 km northeast of Baghdad, said the attack began when five Iraqi soldiers were killed in an ambush. A suicide car bomb then hit police heading to reinforce the area, killing two. Three people were killed by roadside bombs.
— Additional input from agencies
