Two Britons reported killed in Iraq

11/28/2005

London Guardian Staff and agencies
Monday November 28, 2005

At least two Britons were today reported killed and three injured in a gun attack on a bus carrying Shia pilgrims in Iraq.

Officials at Baghdad’s Yarmouk hospital said four men and one woman who appeared to be Britons of South Asian origin were brought in after the checkpoint shooting in the Dora district of the Iraqi capital.

A Reuters cameraman at the hospital said the body of at least one British Asian man had been brought in to the hospital. A copy of the man’s passport and those of at least four other British nationals were being held by hospital staff.

A spokeswoman for the British embassy in Baghdad said consular and security staff were investigating the reports.

“We’ve heard that it could be two British nationals, but we know no more than that,” she said.

The bus was taking pilgrims from Baghdad to the holy Shia city of Kerbala.

The shooting came the day after it emerged a British peace campaigner was among four humanitarian workers kidnapped in Baghdad.

Norman Kember, of Pinner, north London, was snatched along with two Canadians and an American on Saturday.

The BBC reported that the four were snatched from a dangerous district in west Baghdad and that the group may have been in the area with “pretty minimal” security.

Those close to the campaigner, who is believed to be in his 70s, have reacted with shock at news of his abduction.

An official at one of the peace groups where Mr Kember sometimes works said he was unaware he was in Iraq, adding that he believed it was his first visit to the country. Hundreds of foreigners and Iraqis have been seized in Iraq in the past 18 months, prompting many aid agencies to leave the country.

But after a spate of abductions last year culminating in the executions of Briton Ken Bigley and Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, the number of westerners held in the country has fallen in recent months, though the abductions and executions of Iraqis and Arab diplomats continues.

Diplomats from Morocco, Egypt and Algeria have been killed in the past six months. Others have been freed by security forces or else released unharmed by groups less fanatical than the al-Qaida in Iraq group that has claimed most of the beheadings and executions.

The last known abduction of a westerner was that of the Guardian’s Baghdad correspondent, Rory Carroll, who was released unharmed last month after 36 hours in captivity.

The Foreign Office said it would be “setting in motion an urgent investigation” into the kidnappings.

“We will be in touch with the Iraqi authorities, and with the other countries involved, the Americans and the Canadians,” a spokesman said.