- HILLA, Iraq (AFP) -- Two
US government employees and their Iraqi interpreter were shot dead in central
Iraq, while an errant US mortar round killed one Iraqi civilian.
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- Attackers disguised as Iraqi police shot the three after
holding them up at a false checkpoint near Hilla, 100 kilometres (60 miles)
south of Baghdad, on Tuesday, Polish military official Zdzislaw Gnatowski
told AFP in Warsaw.
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- "Three Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) civilian
employees were killed," a CPA spokeswoman said Wednesday.
-
- Five suspects have been arrested over the killings.
-
- "The attackers, disguised as Iraqi policemen, had
set up a false checkpoint ... They stopped the car in which the two US
civilian workers and their Iraqi interpreter were travelling at 8:00 pm
(1700 GMT)," he said.
-
- "They shot them on the spot. In their car, the soldiers
discovered three bodies ... They also found arms.
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- "The soldiers arrested five men and have handed
them over to the American police," Gnatowski said.
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- Poland heads a multinational force of 9,000 troops patrolling
southern and central Iraq, with their headquarters in Hilla.
-
- In northern Iraq, an off-target US mortar round killed
one Iraqi civilian and wounded another when it struck a building in the
village of Ejba, the US military said Wednesday.
-
- "A mortar round from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division
accidentally struck a building in the southeast side of Ejba, killing one
citizen and injuring another Monday," Taskforce Olympia, charged with
the northern provinces of Nineveh, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, said in a statement.
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- "The coalition unit was conducting a mission against
hostile forces in the area when one round fell short of its intended target.
Soldiers were immediately dispatched to the scene."
-
- The soldiers transported the casualties to a medical
hospital for treatment and the incident is under investigation, the military
said.
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- In nearby Mosul, a police chief narrowly avoided an attempt
on his life.
-
- "Three unknown persons in a car opened fire on chief
Abdel Azal Haffudi in the city centre. In the ensuing exchange of fire,
one assailant was killed and two others injured," police Colonel Mohammad
Abdallah Obeidi told AFP.
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- In other developments, a bomb exploded early Tuesday
some 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Baghdad, near the Baquba office
of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one
of the main Shiite parties.
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- "Around 6:00 am (0300 GMT), a bomb placed by the
Badr Organisation office exploded left four people wounded, including the
four year-old son of one of the security guards," said Faraj Hatem,
a SCIRI official.
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- "The wounds were not serious, but the building was
badly damaged."
-
-
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- SCIRI offices around Iraq have been periodically hit
by weapons fire since the fall of Saddam Hussein last April.
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- One of the wounded men, Mohammed Ali, told AFP from his
hospital bed that all the men were inside the building at the time of the
blast.
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- And in Najaf, a Shiite holy city in central Iraq, the
city administrative offices were evacuated Wednesday amid an alert involving
a possible rocket attack, a local official said.
-
- "The governor received a telephone call from an
unknown person threatening to attack his offices with rockets, and the
building was evacuated, as were other nearby buildings and residences,"
the official, Kazem Kechir, said.
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