Gunmen Ambush, Kill 3 British Soldiers in Iraq

Three British soldiers were killed and one was seriously injured Saturday when gunmen in a red pickup ambushed their vehicles on a busy downtown street in this southern city.

The brazen morning attack capped a week of escalating sabotage and terrorism for the U.S.-led coalition. Yet in Baghdad the top occupation official insisted that the recent setbacks have been eclipsed by “a swelling tide of good news” about reconstruction and recovery.

U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III acknowledged that the week “was not a good one.” It began with the bombing of a vital oil pipeline carrying Iraqi crude to Turkey, costing the country $7 million a day, and included the bombing of the U.N. headquarters where at least 20 people died.

“We have never hidden the fact that we have security problems in Iraq,” Bremer told reporters. But he ticked off a list of advances -- a water main repaired, some electrical substations restored after sabotage, improvements in rural health care and irrigation -- to back his view that the U.S. plan to transform Iraq into a prosperous democracy is succeeding.

Accounts of the attack on British troops shocked the 11,000-strong British force that occupies a swath of southern Iraq, where Shiite Muslims form the majority. “This is a very unusual and unfortunate incident,” said Lynda Sawyers, a British military spokeswoman. “We have very good relations with the people of Basra.”

Military officials said they had no suspects in the attack, which targeted a Royal Military Police patrol. The assailants escaped, and it was unclear whether the soldiers had a chance to return fire.

Saturday’s attack brings to 10 the number of British troops killed in Iraq since President Bush said on May 1 that major combat was over. On June 24, six Royal Military Police soldiers were killed when a mob, angered by weapons searches, stormed the police compound in Majar Kabir, a town two hours north of Basra. And a British captain was killed two weeks ago when a concealed bomb detonated near his vehicle.

Two weeks ago, residents angered at shortages of gasoline and electricity staged riots. Some stoned British troops, but none were injured seriously, and calm returned to the city quickly as British authorities moved to improve supplies.

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In Baghdad, Bremer moved up the target date for restoring prewar utility levels, saying coalition officials and the Iraqi Governing Council hope to have reliable electrical supplies to the population by the end of September.

“They share our frustration with not being able to restore essential services to prewar levels,” Bremer said of the council, a body with vague authority that is expected to nominate officials soon to serve as interim government ministers.

Also in Baghdad, U.N. employees went back to work four days after the massive bombing that killed the special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, as well as other veteran staffers. Workers erected tents and moved container housing onto the site of the building, smashed by a massive truck bomb on Tuesday.

Some officials involved in investigating the bombing have hinted that it appeared to have been an inside job, with security guards perhaps helping the assailants. But Bremer said it was “too early to know. The investigation goes on.”

Throughout the country, especially in rattled Baghdad, concern about terrorism remains high. The British Embassy in the capital has moved its operations from downtown to a “secure zone” housing the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. The move was a precautionary measure made a day after the bombing, said Karen Triggs, spokeswoman for the occupation administration.

The killings in Basra and news about the embassy relocation raised fears in the English media that Britons in Iraq might increasingly be targets.

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A second night of ethnic violence in the northern city of Kirkuk brought the death toll in the clashes between Kurds and Turkmen tribesmen to 10. Two people were killed late Saturday at a demonstration at the site of a Shiite shrine said to have been vandalized by Kurds.

The violence was ignited when several hundred Turkmens protested the destruction of the mountaintop shrine. Two members of the police force, which is predominantly Kurdish, were reported to have fired on the demonstrators. The officers have been detained by the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade and local officials, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The shrine, which was banned under Saddam Hussein, was rebuilt by Turkmens this spring. But the Turkmens say Kurds recently destroyed the place of worship and killed several Turkmens in the melee.

A convoy of nearly two dozen cars and minivans drove from the shrine site in Tuz Kharmato to Baghdad late Friday bearing coffins said to contain the bodies of five people who Turkmens said were killed by Kurds affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The PUK is one of two Kurdish political parties that control northern Iraq. Chanting religious slogans, they vowed to avenge the deaths of their comrades.

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In his radio address, President Bush vowed Saturday not to waver in his fight against terrorists despite the bombing of the U.N. headquarters and a suicide bus bombing in Israel.

“Terrorists commit atrocities because they want the civilized world to flinch and retreat so they can impose their totalitarian vision,” Bush said. “There will be no flinching in this war on terror, and there will be no retreat.”

Bush insisted that the bombings are a sign not of a failure of U.S. policy, but of its success.

“In most of Iraq, there is steady movement toward reconstruction and a stable, self-governing society,” the president said. “This progress makes the remaining terrorists even more desperate and willing to lash out against symbols of order and hope, like coalition forces and U.N. personnel. The world will not be intimidated.”

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McDonnell reported from Basra and Williams from Baghdad. Times staff writers Chris Kraul in Baghdad and Maura Reynolds in Crawford, Texas, contributed to this report.