Polish officer killed in Baghdad ambush

BAGHDAD - Guerrillas shot and killed a Polish army officer south of Baghdad on Thursday, the first soldier to die from a multi-national division set up to relieve the pressure on United States forces in Iraq.

The Polish major was killed after assailants opened fire on his convoy on Thursday morning and shot him in the neck as he travelled between two military camps.

In Washington, President George W. Bush demanded democracy and liberty in the Middle East - naming even close ally Egypt - in his latest bid to justify the war in Iraq as necessary to foster democracy.

Echoing Bush's theme, influential Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, an architect of the Iraq war, blasted Iran as "up to its eyeballs in terrorism" and said it was no surprise that what he called foreign terrorists were crossing into Iraq to fight US-led forces.

"Success in Iraq is a threat to every tyrannical regime in the region, and they understand that," Perle said in a speech in Berlin.

The death of the Polish officer in Iraq came as Britain's top envoy to Baghdad warned of a "rough winter" ahead in the face of increasingly bold guerrilla violence.

The Pentagon began alerting tens of thousands of US troops for Iraq duty next year, although officers hope to cut the total number of US soldiers in the country by May.

The American military, which has borne the lion's share of casualties in the task force it leads in Iraq, said on Thursday two more of its soldiers had been killed.

Attackers firing guns and rocket-propelled grenades killed one US soldier and wounded two others in an ambush south of Baghdad on Wednesday evening, US Central Command said. That attack brought to 139 the number of US soldiers killed in action since Washington declared on May 1 that major combat was over.

Another US soldier was killed on Thursday morning when his truck struck a landmine near the border with Syria.

In his foreign policy address to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush challenged Iran and Syria by name, as well as Egypt, to adopt democracy, and vowed Washington would not support Arab states that rejected liberty.

The United States has accused both Syria and Iran of not doing enough to close their borders to what Washington calls terrorists crossing into Iraq to join the anti-US fight.

Suicide bombings in Baghdad, rocket attacks on its headquarters and daily ambushes on its troops have made the past few weeks particularly tough for Iraq's occupying coalition.

"I believe we are in for a rough winter," Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's Special Representative to Iraq, has said.

He said insurgents "want to try and close Baghdad down and make it look as though Iraq can't work with coalition forces", and added that British troops could still be in Iraq in 2005.

The mounting US death toll and failure to find any weapons of mass destruction have put pressure on Bush, who will seek re-election next year.

The United Nations has withdrawn the last of its 20 foreign staff from Baghdad, but about 40 more remained in northern Iraq. The move followed the suicide bombing last week of Red Cross headquarters and three police stations, and the attack on the UN headquarters on August 19.

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq