BAGHDAD, 2 June 2003 — Two US soldiers were wounded and two Iraqis killed yesterday in a grenade attack in front of a mosque in Baghdad, US troops and witnesses told AFP.
“Two soldiers were hurt in a grenade attack on an armored vehicle,” said a US soldier on the scene who asked not to be named.
Iraqi witnesses confirmed that a group of Iraqis threw a grenade at an American vehicle in front of the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya district of the capital.
“Then the Americans opened fire. Two people were killed, named Abdel Wahab Ouweid Attiyah and Omar Abbad Sheikh Al-Zukhi, and three others were wounded. None of them took part in the attack,” claimed one witness, Jassem Mohammad Adhiyah.
An apartment block across from the mosque caught fire during the incident but it was not immediately clear how.
Hundreds of angry Iraqis then gathered outside the mosque and faced off with the US troops at the site but there were no immediate clashes.
Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite television had earlier reported that a US soldier and two Iraqi passersby were killed in the attack.
Meanwhile, the US-led team in Iraq said yesterday that an interim Iraqi administration will be put in place within six weeks, headed by a political council that will act as a fledgling government.
The council will be appointed by the US-British coalition forces here following wide-ranging consultations with Iraqis. The move comes after the US-British team decided to scrap a long-promised national political conference.
The 25-30 strong body will advise the occupation administration on the whole range of policy issues, economic as well as political, and will name advisers to all of Iraq’s ministries who will be ministers in waiting.
It will also debate, ratify and then put to a referendum a new constitution, which is to be drawn up by a separate convention.
In another development, Iraqis traumatized by postwar lawlessness shunned arms collection points in Baghdad yesterday, the first day of a two-week gun amnesty offered by US forces trying to restore order after Saddam Hussein’s fall.
