Two British civilians suspected dead after another Mosul attack

MOSUL - Two foreigners, one of them British, have been shot dead in one of four attacks in the increasingly lawless city of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Security has deteriorated sharply in Mosul, 390km north of Baghdad, in recent weeks.

The bodies of two men, wearing blue flak jackets, lay in the road on Sunday beside their burned-out white four-wheel drive for an hour after the attack in an eastern part of the city.

"I can confirm that one British national was killed in Mosul," a foreign office spokesman said. There was no word on the nationality of the second victim.

An Iraqi technician, who asked not to be named, had earlier said both men were British civilians working at the Mosul East power station near the scene of the shooting.

"They were on their way to the power station in two cars when they came under fire from attackers with AK-47s (assault rifles). One vehicle was hit," he said.

An Iraqi bystander, Jamal Abdul-Razzak Nasser, said the gunmen in Sunday's attack had fired from a car. US forces later sealed off the area and Iraqi ambulances removed the bodies.

Earlier gunmen in a car fired assault rifles at the offices of the US-run Iraqi Media Network in Mosul, wounding two employees, IMN official Ghazi Faisal told Reuters.

At around midday, an assailant threw a grenade at a police patrol in the city centre, slightly wounding a policeman. Police said they had detained him and found more grenades on him.

A Katyusha rocket, apparently aimed at the city hall, missed it and hit a nearby primary school for boys, but failed to explode, according to the principal, Abdul-Wahhab Mahmoud.

Two people were killed and 13 wounded in a rocket attack on the city hall on Saturday.

Violence adds to the problems of the United States as it prepares to hand over sovereignty to Iraqis in July.

Earlier this month four US missionaries were shot dead in an ambush in the area.

CHILDREN WOUNDED

Elsewhere, a bomb wounded three children on their way to school and two other civilians on Sunday when it exploded outside the home of an Iraqi contractor working for the Americans near Baquba, 65km north of Baghdad.

Insurgents have increasingly attacked people working with the US-led authorities, as well as members of the fledgling Iraqi security forces, for cooperating with the occupiers.

The bomb in Buhriz, a few kilometres south of Baquba, broke windows and badly damaged a car. The contractor was unhurt, but two of his relatives, a man and a woman, were among the wounded.

At Baquba hospital, two girls and a boy lay in a stark ward, bandages on their limbs and heads, faces caked with blood.

Earlier this month, gunmen killed three Iraqis working for a US-funded television and radio station in Baquba as they drove to work in a minibus. At least five people were wounded.

US officials have said they expect guerrillas to intensify attacks in the runup to a June 30 handover of power to an interim Iraqi government whose main task will be to prepare for elections scheduled to take place in early 2005.

A United Nations team of electoral experts arrived in Iraq on Friday to advise on organising the polls.

Washington's hopes of winning support for its political plans have been dented by opposition from Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Sistani, hugely influential with Iraq's 60 per cent Shi'ite majority, says a US-backed interim constitution signed by the Iraqi Governing Council this month is flawed and undemocratic.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq