Posted on 12/20/2003 6:21:26 AM PST by knighthawk
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The Spanish prime minister paid a brief, surprise visit Saturday to his country's soldiers in Iraq, affirming his support for the occupation as the United States said it was deploying more troops.
Also, U.S. forces mistakenly fired on Iraqi policemen manning a checkpoint in northeast Iraq, killing three officers and wounding two, local police said. And in an apparent revenge campaign, attackers separately killed two people with close ties to the former regime of Saddam Hussein.
In a trip reminiscent of President Bush's Thanksgiving Day visit, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar landed in Iraq at about 11 a.m. with a 16-member delegation to meet with member of the 1,300-strong Spanish contingent in Iraq, based in the southern town of Diwaniyah. He left four hours later.
The trip was so secret that soldiers in the mess didn't know Aznar was there until his visit was announced over a megaphone and the prime minister walked in.
In brief comments to reporters, Aznar expressed support for Spanish troops and said he brought them greetings from King Juan Carlos. He said the soldiers were working for "the cause of freedom, democracy and respect for international law."
He depicted the soldiers' mission as being part of a broad, global campaign against terrorism. "The safety of Spain is also defended in Iraq," he said.
Aznar has staunchly supported the United States despite widespread opposition at home. Ten Spaniards have died in Iraq since August, and the worst attack - an ambush in late November - left seven Spanish intelligence agents dead.
Meanwhile, senior military officials in Washington said the Pentagon is sending an additional 2,000 troops to Iraq and extending the deployment of another unit.
Japan also said it was dispatching 1,000 troops on a humanitarian mission to southern Iraq - the country's first deployment to a conflict zone since World War II.
The pledges of more deployment came as troops in Iraq struggled to maintain order.
On Saturday, an Iraqi police officer said U.S. troops mistakenly shot and killed three Iraqi police and wounded two others, thinking they were bandits.
The policemen were manning a checkpoint on a road in the Sleiman Beg area, 55 miles south of Kirkuk in northeast Iraq, when U.S. troops opened fire around midnight Friday, said Lt. Salam Zangana of the Kirkuk police force. He said two other policemen were wounded.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.
Also, in Najaf, gunmen on a bicycle attacked Damiyah Abbas, a former provincial official of Saddam's Baath Party, and her 5-year-old son in front of her home on Saturday, witnesses said.
The boy was killed, and his mother was in critical condition in a hospital, Police Lt. Raed Abbas said.
It was the second attack in the Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf - apparently part of a series of revenge killings against local members of Saddam's Baathist regime, which brutally repressed Shiites. Damiyah Abbas was believed to have participated in the repression of a 1991 Shiite uprising against Saddam's government.
On Friday, gunmen killed former Baath official Ali Qassem al-Tamimi, the district mayor of Najaf's al-Furat neighborhood, as he shopped with a friend, according to another police official, Lt. Raed Jawad Abdel Saada. Another former Baath official was lynched on Wednesday.
U.S. officials in Baghdad belatedly admitted Friday that rebels attacked U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer's convoy two weeks ago, exploding a roadside bomb and opening fire with small arms. The Dec. 6 attack took place the same day U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was visiting Baghdad.
Bremer's convoy sped away from the shooting near Baghdad airport, and no one was hurt.
Dan Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said it appeared "a random opportunistic attack" and not an assassination attempt.
"As you can see, it didn't succeed," Bremer told reporters Friday in the southern city of Basra.
Several attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi police in recent days have claimed more than a dozen lives in Baghdad and in predominantly Sunni Muslim areas west and north of the capital that formed Saddam's power base.
Friday morning, a homemade roadside bomb hit a U.S. truck northwest of Baghdad, wounding two American soldiers, said Capt. Tammy Galloway of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division.
Nevertheless, U.S. military officials said this week that there were fewer attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces over the past month while attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces were increasing. Rebels have targeted Iraqis working with the U.S.-led occupation authorities.
On Friday, an explosion destroyed a west Baghdad branch office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, the biggest party supported by Shiites, who comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people and who were brutally repressed by Saddam.
Rahim Jaber said the pre-dawn blast killed his elderly sister, who was sleeping when the roof of their home collapsed, and injured seven other people. The front part of the one-story building was a party office - some said an office of the party's armed militia - and the back was occupied by people made homeless when the United States invaded.
Also Friday, Iraqi police shot and wounded two people they said were trying to place roadside bombs on a route used by the U.S. army around al-Hawija, a town 15 miles west of Kirkuk.
Col. Muslim Hassan of the Kirkuk police force told the AP that the wounded rebels escaped; U.S. soldiers defused the two bombs.
Consulate General of Spain in Washington D.C.
2375 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington D.C. 20037
Tef. (202) 728-2330
Fax: (202) 728-2302
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