3 Die in Ambushes of 2 Civilian Convoys in Iraq

Gunmen targeting caravans of four-wheel-drive vehicles killed at least three people Sunday, and cheering bystanders doused two of the bullet-riddled SUVs with gasoline and set them ablaze, according to Iraqi police and witnesses.

The attacks, the latest in a spate of ambushes targeting foreigners, came as a tentative cease-fire between occupation forces and fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada Sadr threatened to unravel. U.S. troops and the cleric’s militiamen reportedly engaged in a major firefight in the city of Kufa after the troops arrived to secure a police station. The military reported that two soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

Also Sunday, a roadside bomb exploded beside a U.S. Army vehicle south of Baghdad, killing one 1st Armored Division soldier and wounding two, the military said today.

The more violent of the two ambushes on civilian convoys Sunday occurred at dusk near a highway overpass in north Baghdad. Attackers fired machine guns at a convoy of up to four British civilian vehicles, sending the vehicles swerving into highway dividers and causing two of them to smash head-on into each other.

Police and witness accounts varied widely. But police said at least one Iraqi security guard and an Iraqi bystander were killed.

One witness said that after the assault, men in civilian dress and bulletproof vests jumped out and fired weapons at an attacker. The men then commandeered a BMW and escaped from the scene, this witness said.

Witnesses also said youths carrying cans of gasoline set two of the vehicles on fire, sending columns of black smoke over the Shiite neighborhood of Jawadayn. Video images showed young men dancing in the roadway as the vehicles burned.

When Iraqi police arrived, officers engaged in a brief gun battle with members of the crowd who were dragging a man in a protective vest from the driver’s seat of one of the vehicles, witnesses said. Police said that at least six people were injured in the confrontation.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said that there was no truth to reports that several people had been taken hostage, Associated Press reported.

The other ambush occurred around 2:30 p.m., when gunmen opened fire on a group of four-wheel-drive vehicles carrying civilian contractors headed for Baghdad international airport, according to the U.S. Army. It said one passenger was killed and another was injured.

The two attacks were the latest in a series of assaults apparently aimed at driving out those providing support for occupation forces. In many of the cases, insurgents appeared to have identified their victims by the very body and vehicle armor that was intended to protect them. The ambushes Sunday, and the torching of the vehicles, recalled the killing and mutilation of four private security contractors in Fallouja on March 31, at the beginning of a nationwide uprising against the occupation.

Another recent incident involved the shooting death of a South African security contractor in body armor who was shopping in a Baghdad market. Two English security contractors died last week when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb that destroyed their armored car near Baghdad’s Green Zone, the coalition’s headquarters.

Sunday’s attacks coincided with the threatened collapse of a truce between Sadr’s followers and coalition troops. Three days after Sadr pledged to pull back from the holy city of Najaf if the U.S. military did the same, the sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades shook the neighboring city of Kufa.

Shiite militiamen accused the U.S. of firing near Kufa’s main mosque, damaging its outer wall. CNN quoted soldiers as saying it was the most intense fighting in the area in the last six weeks.

Sadr’s followers also fired rocket-propelled grenades at a patrol of coalition soldiers in Najaf from positions in the city’s sprawling cemetery, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military spokesman.

Coalition forces have said they would not conduct offensive actions in light of the cease-fire, but said they would fire back if attacked. The difference between an offensive strike and a defensive response is not always clear; military commanders acknowledge that one tactic used in fighting Sadr’s followers has been to purposely draw fire while patrolling, so that enemy gunmen can be spotted and killed.

Kimmitt said although it was possible that some of Sadr’s forces had not yet received word of the cease-fire, coalition troops would exercise their “right of self-defense.” Fallouja, which had been surrounded by U.S. Marines for weeks, also had witnessed sporadic fighting during a cease-fire.

Kimmitt said it was too early to tell if the peace deal with Sadr had collapsed. “We will have to wait and see and respond as and when necessary.”