- BAGHDAD (Reuters) -- Seven
Spanish intelligence agents were killed on Saturday in an attack on their
unmarked vehicles south of Baghdad, Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo
said, the latest assault on a close American ally.
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- He said in a nationally televised address that another
agent was slightly hurt in the attack by guerrillas using rocket-propelled
grenades and assault rifles.
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- In Japan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said two Japanese
who may have been diplomats were killed in an apparent ambush near Tikrit,
hometown of Iraq's ousted leader Saddam Hussein 110 miles north of Baghdad.
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- "There is a good possibility they are Japanese diplomats,"
spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said.
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- Reports of the attacks came hours after the top military
commander in Iraq said attacks against U.S. forces had fallen sharply in
recent weeks, despite figures showing November to be the deadliest month
for U.S. troops since the war began in March.
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- U.S. 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 more aggressive tactics by U.S. forces.
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- A Reuters television crew at the scene of the attack
on the Spaniards about 45 km (28 miles) from Baghdad filmed a burned-out
vehicle surrounded with spent shell casings and scattered bits of flesh.
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- The attacks on both the Spaniards and on Japanese are
likely to embarrass their respective governments.
-
- Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar defied public
opinion at home to send around 1,300 peacekeepers to Iraq after strongly
endorsing the U.S. and British decision to invade the country on March
20.
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- COMPLICATE TOKYO'S PLANS
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- The ambush on the Japanese, in which a non-Japanese driver
was wounded, is likely to complicate efforts by Tokyo, Washington's closest
Asian ally, to decide whether to send non-combat troops to help rebuild
Iraq. Voters are increasingly nervous about the dangers involved.
-
- 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:
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- "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...
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- "People said they were CIA. Maybe they did not know
they were Spanish...Two Iraqi policemen on motorcycles drove by and did
not stop at all at the scene."
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- 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 checkered Arab scarves
across their faces. People around the bodies were chanting 'We sacrifice
our souls and blood for you Saddam (Hussein)'."
-
- The Spanish force is part of a Polish-led multinational
contingent responsible for security in the south-central part of the country.
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- Aznar stood shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a meeting on the eve of the invasion.
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- "NO TO WAR" IN SPAIN
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- Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's hand-picked successor to run as
the center-right ruling party candidate in March, said "This will
not stop us...from our commitments to the Iraqi people."
-
- The Socialist opposition, which consistently opposed
the U.S.-led invasion, expressed solidarity with the armed forces, and
a minute of silence was held at the start of several televised Spanish
soccer league matches.
-
- But shouts of "No to war!" could be heard at
one stadium in Madrid when the tribute ended.
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- 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 U.N. mission.
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- 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 two.
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- Britain has lost 20 soldiers in military action. A Polish
army officer has also died.
-
- Since Washington declared major combat over on May 1,
185 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action, bringing the total U.S. military
deaths -- combat and non-combat -- since the start of the war to 436, according
to the Pentagon.
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