Posted on 04/11/2004 10:36:32 PM PDT by yonif
BERLIN: Germany said Sunday that two elite policemen missing in Iraq were probably dead, after a British newspaper said the pair were killed in a gunfire fight with Iraqi rebels near the flashpoint town of Fallujah.
There is a "strong probability" that the two men are dead, a German foreign ministry spokesman said.
A journalist with Britain's The Sunday Telegraph in Fallujah, where Sunni Muslim insurgents have been locked in fierce fighting with US-led occupation forces, said he had seen the bullet-riddled bodies of the Germans.
Journalist Lee Gordon said he was told that the Germans had been traveling last Wednesday in a six-vehicle convoy which had crashed through a mujahedeen checkpoint on a highway between Baghdad and Jordan.
"During the ensuing high-speed chase, gunfire erupted between the Iraqis and the convoy. When the Iraqis, using rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, hit the tyres of the last vehicle it swerved off the road."
An identification badge in one victim's wallet showed that he was a 25-year-old German, the journalist reported.
Germany, which was one of the strongest opponents of the war on Iraq, does not have military personnel serving with the US-led coalition in Iraq, having opposed last year's invasion.
Their butts hang in the balance, too.
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