BASRA, 31 July 2005 — A roadside bomb blew up a British Consulate convoy in the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday, killing two Britons working for a private security firm, a consular spokeswoman and the company said.
Karen McLuskie of the consulate in Basra said the convoy was attacked as it passed through a southwestern part of the city.
It was not clear if anyone else was injured in the blast.
The two dead were security contractors employed by Control Risks Group and both were British citizens, said Peter Stevenson, a spokesman for the London-based security company.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a car attacked a police checkpoint near the National Theater, killing at least five people and wounding 20, a police source said.
Hours earlier, moderate Sunni leader Sheikh Khalaf Al-Ilayan escaped an assassination attempt in which his bodyguard was wounded, said a spokesman for his group, The Iraqi National Dialogue.
Two members of The Iraqi National Dialogue serving on the committee drafting Iraq’s new constitution were shot dead two weeks ago, prompting Sunnis to boycott the panel for six days.
They resumed their work, but yesterday’s assassination attempt was a new challenge to the Shiite-dominated government’s strategy of drawing Sunnis into the political process to try to defuse the insurgency.
The attack took place at a time of growing sectarian tension that has raised fears of civil war.
The insurgency is led by members of the Sunni minority, which has accused the government of sanctioning Shiite hit squads. The government denies the allegations.
“Sheikh Khalaf Al-Ilayan was heading to Baghdad when men in the uniforms of government forces attacked his car,” The Iraqi National Dialogue spokesman said.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq has said Sunnis that join Iraq’s political process would be infidels who deserved to die.
Most of the suicide attacks and roadside bombs in Iraq have been concentrated in Baghdad, Mosul and Anbar province, the heartland of the insurgency.
The death toll from a suicide bombing in northern Iraq on Friday climbed to 40, police said yesterday.
They said the number of wounded in the attack by a man who blew himself up among a group of Iraqi army recruits rose to 57.
Basra, Iraq’s second city, has been relatively free of such bloodshed. However, there have been periodic outbreaks of violence there and in other cities in the south, where British troops are stationed.
After yesterday’s attack, Reuters television footage showed a dark blue sport utility vehicle with smashed paneling and blood on a side window. Iraqi police and British forces were at the scene.
For Iraqis, it was another day of bombs, kidnappings and gruesome discoveries.
The bodies of three people who had been blindfolded and shot were found in Baghdad. Police said the three men were Baghdad Airport employees kidnapped by insurgents.
An Iraqi Health Ministry official, Eman Naji, was kidnapped by gunmen who stormed her home in the capital’s prosperous Mansour district, police said. A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi civilian and wounded three in a car on a road south of Baghdad, police said. Another blast targeting a US military convoy killed one Iraqi civilian in the Doura district of Baghdad, police said.
