Mitterrand’s Wife Escapes Iraq Bomb Attack

Danielle Mitterrand, wife of French President Francois Mitterrand, narrowly escaped a car-bomb attack Monday that killed four other people in northern Iraq, officials said.

The bomb, which exploded near Danielle Mitterrand’s motorcade at 8:45 a.m. local time, wounded 19 people, an Iraqi opposition group said.

A U.N. source in Geneva confirmed the report, although he put the number hurt at 10, three of them seriously.

In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Bernard said, “We condemn this kind of attack in the strongest terms.” He provided no details.

The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of organizations opposed to President Saddam Hussein, said the explosion killed three Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas who were traveling in the last car of Mitterrand’s motorcade.

The guerrillas were serving as special security guards for her, the congress said in a statement faxed to the Associated Press in Nicosia.

The fourth person killed was a 10-year-old boy, the statement added.

Mitterrand is on a three-day visit to Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.

The French government has been a strong supporter of the Kurdish drive for autonomy. Mitterrand visited refugee camps in Iran in April, 1991, and has been a longtime proponent of Kurdish rights. She also founded the French human rights group France-Liberte.

The official Iraqi News Agency on Monday quoted the major Iraqi newspaper Al Qadissiya as saying her visit, which was not made via Baghdad, was “foolish behavior and a rude violation of Iraq’s dignity and sovereignty.”

The report, which appeared before the bombing, accused Mitterrand of having “deep contacts” with “the dissident gangs in the north.”

The Iraqi opposition group quoted unidentified witnesses as saying a Toyota Land Cruiser exploded in a 60-foot-high fireball as the last car in the motorcade passed near the town of Sulaymaniyah, 170 miles north of Baghdad.

Several of the injured people were in a bus that was passing the motorcade from the opposite direction, the statement added. The U.N. source said that pieces of metal were said to have scattered 50 yards, setting another car on fire.

Mitterrand, who has often visited refugees in remote parts of the world, was accompanied on her visit by France’s minister for health and humanitarian affairs, Bernard Kouchner, who also was not hurt.

Mitterrand and Kouchner continued a trip in the area on behalf of private aid causes, the U.N. source said.

“They were not hurt and the convoy proceeded,” he said.

A policeman at the scene said the explosive-laden car had a U.N. logo on it, but this could have been a disguise, he said.

U.N. agencies have had relief programs in northern Iraq since the failed Kurdish rebellion last year against Hussein.