Bush's hands are red with others blood....
7 Allied Officers Killed in Iraq
The Spanish intelligence agents are ambushed south of Baghdad. Two U.S. soldiers and
two Japanese diplomats are slain elsewhere.
By John Daniszewski and Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff
Writers
LATIFIYAH, Iraq — Fighters with automatic rifles and
rocket-propelled grenades overwhelmed two cars of
armed Spanish intelligence officers on a heavily traveled
highway here Saturday, killing seven of the eight agents
aboard in a brief but fierce battle.
Iraqi insurgents also killed two American soldiers and
two Japanese diplomats in separate ambushes
Saturday.
The attack raised to 111 the coalition's combat death
toll for November, the costliest month for the U.S. and
its allies since the invasion of Iraq more than eight
months ago. As the Spaniards' bodies lay beside their
burning cars, a few joyful Iraqis surged toward them, in
some cases kicking or stepping on the corpses and
chanting pro-Saddam Hussein slogans. One of the
Spaniards was injured but survived the attack.
"These were holy warriors making jihad [holy war]
against the invaders," said Abdul Qader Faisal, a
26-year-old student among the Iraqis celebrating at the
scene. "We don't want the Americans here. We don't
want the Spanish here. The Americans have done
nothing for us."
Video footage from the scene, broadcast throughout
the Arab world, showed rejoicing youths dancing
alongside the burned remains of the four-wheel-drive
vehicles. Many of the celebrants brandished parts of the
vehicles.
Witnesses said the Spanish agents were ambushed by
men armed with machine guns in two cars. The
Spaniards' vehicles veered off the road. Some agents
may have returned fire, said residents of the rural area,
about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Some witnesses said
gunmen from nearby buildings also opened fire,
suggesting that the assault was well coordinated.
An early U.S. ally in the war to remove Hussein, Spain has sent 1,300 troops to
support the occupation, participating in an international division based in Hillah,
south of Baghdad, and responsible for a sector of central Iraq. Ten Spaniards
have been killed since the war began.
A statement issued by the coalition today said two U.S. soldiers were killed when
a convoy of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was ambushed near Husaybah, a
town near the Syrian border. A third soldier, who was wounded in the attack,
was flown by helicopter to a nearby base hospital.
Separately, two Japanese diplomats were killed Saturday after their car was
ambushed in northern Iraq, Japan's Foreign Ministry said.
Details of the attack were still sketchy, but Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi
said in Tokyo that the vehicle was ambushed near the city of Tikrit, where the
envoys were to attend an aid conference.
Katsuhiko Oku, 45, headed the cultural affairs section of the Japanese Embassy
in London and had been on assignment in Iraq. Masamori Inoue, 30, was a
mid-level diplomat at the Baghdad mission.
Their driver, whose nationality was not immediately known, was seriously injured.
The killing of the two embassy officials is likely to disquiet Japan, which has been
debating when to dispatch its troops to aid in Iraq's reconstruction. The Japanese
public remains wary of sending its troops to Iraq, and Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi has declined to say exactly when the troops will be sent, saying only that
he will send them after carefully studying the situation.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell telephoned Kawaguchi to express his
sympathy, the Foreign Ministry said. Kawaguchi told him that Japan would not
waver in its commitment to the campaign against terrorism and the reconstruction
of Iraq.
The Bush administration has been trying to expand its coalition to relieve the
burden on U.S. forces. So far, it has not been able to enlist significant numbers of
foreign troops. This month, 19 Italians, including two civilians, were killed in a
bombing in the southern city of Nasiriyah, Italy's highest military death toll since
World War II.
Latifiyah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold on the edge of the so-called Sunni Triangle,
has been the scene of several bloody incidents in recent weeks and witnessed the
assassination of its pro-U.S. police chief a week ago.
A spokesman reached at the Spanish Defense Ministry in Madrid said those
killed belonged to the National Intelligence Service and were traveling from
Baghdad to the headquarters in Hillah. Four of the officers were scheduled to
relieve the other four, and they were preparing to change posts. "They were
attacked by RPG rockets and Kalashnikovs," said the spokesman, who would
not give his name.
U.S. officials had noted a sharp drop-off in attacks against coalition forces in
recent days, saying it was the result of a more aggressive policy by the coalition
military. But another possible explanation is that insurgents were following
religious leaders' exhortations to slow attacks during the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the
end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Eid al-Fitr ended Thursday.
Asked about the high level of casualties in November, a spokesman for the U.S.
Central Command in Florida said that many of the losses came in a few unusually
deadly attacks.
"There were a couple of incidents that involved a large number of soldiers, such
as the helicopter crashes, that inflated the numbers," said Cmdr. Dan Gage, a
Central Command spokesman.
In recent weeks, hostile fire is believed to have been involved in the crashes of
five U.S. military helicopters, killing 39 Americans.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said that as of 4 p.m. Friday, 298 U.S. soldiers had
been killed in hostile fire in Iraq and 137 had died in nonhostile circumstances
since the beginning of the war in March.
The top U.S. military commander in the country, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said
at a news conference in Baghdad on Saturday that although officials believed that
the Al Qaeda terrorist network was linked to the ongoing attacks in Iraq, they
had yet to identify any Al Qaeda fighters in the country.
But Sanchez said there were continuing indications that foreign recruits might have
played a part in the string of suicide bombings that have killed dozens in Iraq and
terrorized a nation already traumatized by war. One assailant captured in a foiled
attack on a Baghdad police station last month has been identified as a Yemeni.
"There could have been some operatives that blew themselves up," said Sanchez,
who noted similarities between the suicide attack on the Italian compound in
southern Iraq and suicide car bombings in Saudi Arabia blamed on Al Qaeda.
"When you look at the transfer of tactics and techniques, there's some indicators
that maybe they're learning from each other."
The role of foreign fighters in the turmoil has been a contentious question in Iraq
for months.
Bush administration officials have tended to emphasize the involvement of foreign
volunteers. But U.S. military commanders have generally downplayed the
foreigners' significance.
The Army says hard-line Iraqi loyalists of the former regime have financed and
organized the attacks, although military officials acknowledge that the loyalists
may have used the services of foreign-trained assailants in the suicide attacks.
On Friday, Italian and German police arrested three suspected members of a
European-based network that had allegedly recruited Islamic extremists in
Europe to fight in Iraq.
Italian officials said five such recruits had died in suicide attacks in Iraq in recent
months, although the U.S. military in Iraq could not confirm the Italian account.
Even before the U.S. invasion, the Hussein government had paraded legions of
foreign volunteers before the international media, identifying them as recruits
willing to give their lives in the fight against the U.S. Some were killed in the
fighting during the U.S. march to Baghdad, officials say. But some are believed to
have escaped and may have linked up with former government elements, officials
say.
Sanchez reiterated the military's belief that Hussein loyalists represented the "key
threat" facing the U.S.-led coalition now running Iraq.
Officials have raised the possibility that Hussein hard-liners might have formed an
alliance with foreign suicide bombing recruits and might be using them to drive
vehicles to targets selected and scouted by Iraqis.
As the military clashes continued, politicians on the Iraqi Governing Council
working with the United States came closer to demanding that the Coalition
Provisional Authority allow direct elections to choose the full transitional
government that is scheduled to take over in June.
That would be a reversal of the policy agreed to less than two weeks ago by the
coalition and the Governing Council in which regional caucuses would be held to
select representatives to the new government.
Since then, Shiite Muslim leaders have become uneasy about the possibility that
they might lose out unless there were direct elections. With the backing of the
highly respected Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, they have begun to push hard to
revisit the agreement.
After some lobbying, a majority of the Governing Council now supports direct
elections, several members said.
U.S. officials have argued repeatedly that Iraq was not stable enough for such a
popular vote.
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