US 'friendly fire' kills Bulgarian

Bulgaria:A Bulgarian soldier will be buried today after being shot dead by US troops in Iraq last Friday, just hours before they killed an Italian special agent.

Bulgaria's defence minister Nikolai Svinarov said a patrol of Bulgarian soldiers had fired warning shots above a civilian car in central Iraq after it refused to stop on command.

"Directly after the warning shots, the patrol became the target of massive fire from the west," Mr Svinarov said, after an investigation into the shooting. "A communication site of the US army is located some 150m away in the same direction.

"The results give us enough grounds to believe the death of rifleman Gurdi Gurdev was caused by friendly fire," he concluded. Gurdev became the eighth Bulgarian to die in Iraq and his death will increase scrutiny on US forces there.

US military spokesman Sgt Patrick Murphy said a commission was investigating the alleged attack on the Bulgarian patrol and declined to comment before its results were released.

Gen Nikola Kolev, Bulgaria's army chief of staff, sent a letter to Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, asking for an investigation "to clarify all circumstances and to avoid similar incidents in the future".

Mr Svinarov said: "I have insisted that our coalition partners take urgent measures to improve co-ordination at all levels."

Bulgaria's president Georgi Parvanov summoned the US ambassador and complained about a lack of co-ordination between coalition troops in Iraq.

The latest killing however is only likely to increase widespread anger in Bulgaria at the involvement of about 460 of its troops in Iraq.

The government of prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg has been a staunch supporter of US action in the Gulf and has encouraged the Pentagon's plans to establish bases in his strategic Black Sea country.

However the opposition Socialists have promised to withdraw Bulgaria's troops from Iraq and are strong favourites to win general elections scheduled for June.

Mr Svinarov, beleaguered by opinion polls which show 75 per cent of Bulgarians oppose involvement in Iraq, says he will decide this month whether to keep troops there until the end of this year.