- (AP) -- An American missionary, wounded in a drive-by
shooting in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, has died, raising the number
of Americans killed in the attack to four, the US military said.
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- A fifth American, hurt in the attack, was being treated
at a US military hospital in Mosul.
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- Meanwhile, AFP reported that gunmen killed a female Iraqi
translator for the US army in Mosul early yesterday.
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- "Assailants drove up alongside her car and fired
Kalashnikovs, hitting her in the head and shoulder," policeman Basman
Assad told AFP.
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- "The attackers then sped away."
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- The victims of Monday's drive-by shooting were Baptist
missionaries on a humanitarian mission, AP reported.
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- The Virginia-based Southern Baptist International Mission
Board identified three of the victims as Larry T Elliott, 60, Jean Dover
Elliott, 58, and Karen Denise Watson, 38.
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- Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Piek, a spokesman for American
forces in Mosul, said the five Americans were travelling in one car on
the eastern side of the city when they were attacked.
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- An off-duty Iraqi policeman found the car shortly after
the attack late on Monday afternoon.
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- Three of the victims were dead. The officer took the
two wounded to an Iraqi hospital. US Army air medical evacuation helicopters
later transported them to a combat support hospital in Mosul.
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- One of the two was then flown to a US hospital in Baghdad,
but died en route, Lieutenant-Colonel Piek said.
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- The name of the fourth fatality and the injured victim
were being withheld until family members had been contacted.
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- The Elliotts were scouting the best location for a water
purification project, said Michelle DeVoss of the First Baptist Church
in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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- "They knew going into Iraq, they couldn't really
share their Christian faith unless somebody asked them," said Larry
Kingsley, a church deacon.
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- "They were there in a humanitarian situation. They
were people who just had a great heart for helping people out."
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- Iraqi police and the FBI were involved in the investigation.
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- The victims were attacked by two or three men in a car,
witnesses said.
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- In Mosul on Sunday, guerillas raked a government convoy
with gunfire, killing the regional secretary of labour and social affairs
and his driver, US Major General Mark Kimmitt said.
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- Copyright © 2004 The Sydney Morning Herald.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/16/1079199231912.html
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