Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Iraq may have set up the weekend attack on a convoy of Russian diplomats fleeing Baghdad by instructing the drivers to take a different route than planned, a senior US official said. The official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said there were indications the Iraqis had tried to create an international incident by altering the route of the convoy to pass through a contested area west of Baghdad on Sunday. "It looks like it was a trap set by the Iraqis," the official said. The State Department said the Russians had given US diplomats precise...

MOSCOW (AP) -- A Russian journalist who was in a convoy that came under fire while leaving Baghdad on Sunday said the vehicles were caught in a crossfire after passing Iraqi positions on the city's outskirts. The convoy containing the Russian ambassador to Iraq and some two dozen diplomats and journalists was passing Iraqi positions on Baghdad's edge when the positions came under heavy fire, Rossiya correspondent Alexander Minakov said on the state-run channel. The Iraqi forces answered automatic weapons fire and the convoy was caught in the crossfire, he said. Minkaov, speaking from Iraq's border with Jordan, where...