South Korean workers killed in ambush

Gunmen shot and killed two South Korean workers and wounded two others north of Baghdad, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said.

The US military in Baghdad said a Colombian civilian working as a contractor for the military died in an ambush on a convoy on Saturday. It was not immediately clear if he was killed in the same attack as the one that targeted the South Koreans.

The two South Korean victims were shot while riding in a passenger car apparently on the way to Tikrit, said Lee Kwang-jae, director general of South Korea’s Foreign Ministry. He did not say when the shooting occurred.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the victims were electricians for a South Korean company under contract with a US firm to lay electric power lines at an electric transmission station near Tikrit.

Lee could not confirm the identities of the dead, who were employees of Ohmoo Electric Co., a company based in Seoul.

Lee said officials from the South Korean Embassy in Iraq were on their way to the scene of the killing to investigate.

In Baghdad, US Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said at a news briefing that a Colombian died when rebels opened fire with small arms on a convoy near the town of Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad.

The Colombian citizen was an employee of the US defence contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., the company previously headed by US Vice President Dick Cheney, the military said.

In Tikrit, a spokesman for the US army said an attack on a convoy today afternoon left three people dead. The incident occurred near Samara, south of Tikrit, said Sgt. Robert Cargie, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division. It was not immediately clear whether the incident was the same as the one involving the South Koreans.

The latest attack came after guerrillas killed two US soldiers and wounded a third in an ambush in western Iraq on Saturday, making November bloodiest month since the war in the country began on March 20.

A military statement in Baghdad said the two latest US fatalities came when a task force from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment was hit by rocket-propelled grenades and automatic fire east of the border town of Husaybah, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad.

In Mahmudiyah, 18 miles south of Baghdad, assailants ambushed a team of Spanish military intelligence officers, killing seven. One Spaniard escaped the assault.

Witnesses at the scene today, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, said the Spaniards had been travelling in a pair of sport utility vehicles when men in a car behind them opened fire. One of the SUVs careened off the road into a ditch.

The occupants ran from the car and were shot at the roadside, perhaps by a second group of attackers involved in the ambush. The burnt-out remains of the car could be seen in a watery ditch at the side of the road, with a group of villagers scavenging its parts.

Witnesses said the four men in the second car were also killed at the side of the road nearby, apparently by a grenade that was thrown or fired at their vehicle. Blood could be seen on bushes nearby, and a broken pair of glasses lay on the road.

The two Japanese diplomats and their driver were killed by unidentified gunmen as they stopped to buy food and drinks at a stand outside the village of Mukayshifa on the road between Baghdad and Tikrit.

The diplomats, on their way to attend a reconstruction conference, were not travelling with a military escort.

In Tokyo, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said there would be no change to Japan’s plans to send troops to support the US-led reconstruction of Iraq. The deaths were the first of Japanese in Iraq since the invasion.

A spokesmen for Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar also affirmed that the attack wouldn’t cause Spain to end its presence in Iraq.

US President George Bush called Aznar “to express his sympathies on behalf of the American people,” said White House spokesman Allen Abney. Spain’s King Juan Carlos professed his profound sorrow over the deaths.

Spain was one of the firmest supporters of the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein and sent 1,300 soldiers to help maintain order. In previous attacks, a Spanish diplomat attached to Spain’s intelligence agency was assassinated near his residence in Baghdad on October 9, and a Spanish navy captain was killed in the truck bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on August 19.

Despite the spate of killings this month, the top US commander in Iraq said the overall number of guerrilla attacks on coalition forces was falling off.

Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez said on Saturday that attacks on US-led forces have dropped some 30% in the past two weeks, from a daily average of 35 to 22. On the worst days earlier this month, there were as many as 50 attacks a day, Sanchez told a news conference in Baghdad.

He said the US suspects operatives of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network have taken part in many of the attacks on coalition and civilian targets, but still has no conclusive evidence of its involvement.