IRAQ: Gunmen posing as Iraqi police shot dead two US civilians and their translator on a road south of Baghdad, officials said yesterday.
The three were killed on Tuesday on a road between Kerbala and Hilla. Their car was found later by Polish troops in charge of security in the area, with the bodies of the victims in the trunk. Five men found with the car were arrested.
A spokesman for Iraq's US governor, Mr Paul Bremer, said the Americans were Department of Defence employees working for the US-led administration in Iraq.
He said it was the first time since the start of the war that non-Iraqi civilians working for the administration had been killed. "This was a targeted act of terrorism and an FBI team has been deployed to investigate," spokesman Mr Dan Senor said.
Poland's Ministry of Defence said the attackers had disguised themselves as police at a checkpoint.
"It was practically an execution, carried out by people pretending to be Iraqi policemen," Defence Minister Mr Jerzy Szmajdzinski said.
Terrorists fighting the occupation of Iraq frequently attack on roads in lawless areas, using bombs hidden by the roadside or opening fire with assault rifles to ambush military vehicles and convoys of foreign civilians. At least 380 US soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq since the start of the war.
Violence also flared in the south when Iraqi police confronted members of a security militia that had seized two people in Nassiriya, 375 km southeast of Baghdad.
A gun battle erupted and four policemen were killed, Mr Andrea Angeli, the coalition spokesman in Nassiriya, said.
He said Italian Carabinieri paratroopers stormed the offices of the security militia, known as the Citizens Security Group (CSG), to end the shoot-out and release the two detainees. One Italian was wounded, he said. "The situation was brought under control at around 1.00 a.m. when Carabinieri special paratroopers stormed the CSG building, rescued the two alleged hostages and arrested eight members of the CSG," Mr Angeli added.
In the restive town of Baquba, 65 km north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded beside the offices of a leading Shia party, wounding at least one person and badly damaging the building, police and witnesses said.
The blast occurred just after 6 a.m. and shattered windows at the offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.