NZ soldier injured in Iraq attack

9.30am

UPDATE - A New Zealand officer wounded in an attack in Iraq is being treated at a British field hospital.

Captain Hayden Gardner was travelling in a convoy that came under attack on Tuesday in the main southern city of Basra.

He received non-life threatening injuries to his right shoulder, hand and foot when a explosion detonated next to the vehicle he was in.

Captain Gardner's injuries were not life threatening, deputy chief of defence staff Brigadier Clive Lilley told National Radio.

The officer was in a convoy of three vehicles when they were attacked on Tuesday in the main southern Iraqi city of Basra.

"There is certainly no suggestion he has been targeted because he's a New Zealander.

"He was travelling in a three vehicle convoy, he was the only New Zealander in the vehicles, there were other military personnel from other countries and Iraqi civilians... and an improvised device was detonated close to his particular vehicle causing his injuries."

Linton Army Camp public information officer Captain Brent Smith told NZPA Capt Gardner was an officer in the Second Engineering Regiment in the second Landforce Group based at the camp.

Capt Gardner had been in Iraq for about a month, and has served overseas before including East Timor.

Brig Lilley said Captain Gardner's work in Iraq involved determining engineering tasks and co-ordination of those tasks, and liaising with civilian and non-governmental organisations.

Tasks he identifies are then given to engineers and tradespeople to do.

Brig Lilley said New Zealand's defence work in Iraq was appreciated, "and our people enjoy what they are doing and it is making a difference".

Also injured in the Basra attack was a foreign civilian, whose nationality was not disclosed, and an Iraqi civilian who was badly hurt, AFP reported.

The agency reported that before the blast that injured the New Zealander two Iraqis had opened fire on the convoy.

British forces who control the south of Iraq sealed off the area of the attack.

The attack was one of a wave of increasing violence against occupation forces in Iraq.

A car bomb exploded on Tuesday in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killing at least four people, a day after about three dozen people died in a wave of suicide bombings here.

United States authorities said one of Baghdad's three deputy mayors had been killed in a hit-and-run shooting.

In Fallujah, a flashpoint Sunni Muslim city 65km west of Baghdad, a car exploded on Tuesday afternoon on a major street, killing at least four people. The explosion occurred about 100 metres from a police station and 30 metres from a school, but the target was unclear.

A rocket-propelled grenade attack killed a US soldier and wounded six others in Baghdad, the US military in Iraq said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Helen Clark is currently travelling to the Middle East to spend the rest of the week visiting New Zealand Defence Force personnel.

Her office is refusing to say exactly where she is going for security reasons.

In the region, New Zealand has troops operating in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sinai and the Arabian Gulf.

The Government has refused to say where an Air Force Orion is based for security reasons.

A spokesman said the Prime Minister had not received any briefings on the incident in Iraq yet.

Before she left New Zealand, Helen Clark said she was pleased to be able to travel to the region to see the conditions in which New Zealanders had been deployed, and that she would report to cabinet and the public when she returned.

Parliament is in recess until November 4.


- NZPA

Herald Feature: Iraq