Attacks against U.S. allies increase in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Insurgents killed two South Korean electricians Sunday, a day after seven Spaniards, two Japanese diplomats and a Colombian contractor were slain in roadside ambushes aimed at undermining international support for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Rebels also killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded a third, as U.S. and allied officials vowed that multinational forces would not be cowed in their mission to rebuild Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

"They clearly are targeting coalition members in an effort to intimidate all allies in Iraq and discourage their participation in the reconstruction of Iraq," said coalition spokesman Dan Senor. "The enemies of freedom ... are trying to break the coalition's will."

Spanish and Japanese officials said the deaths wouldn't change their commitments to Iraq, and Senor said the alliance wouldn't be weakened.

"Our freedom is threatened by all terrorists," Spain's Prime Minister Jose Marie Aznar said Sunday in a speech broadcast in Spain. "We know that a withdrawal would be the worst route we could take."

In Baghdad, Senor, the spokesman for the top U.S. official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, said of U.S. allies: "They intend to stay the course. Their will is stiffened and the reconstruction goes on."

But the chairman of the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Sunday that the attacks risk driving U.S. allies out of Iraq. He said the insurgents appear to understand that their attacks put pressure on international forces to stay away.

"We really have to have the types of individuals there on the ground in Iraq that are good in counterinsurgency," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." "Otherwise we could find ourselves by ourselves out there."

Attacks against U.S. forces, while fewer in recent days, continued their bloody toll as well. Two U.S. soldiers were killed and a third was wounded Saturday when they came under rocket-propelled grenade and automatic fire near the Syrian border in Husaybah, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said Sunday.

Their deaths brought to 104 the number of coalition troops who have died in Iraq in November, including 79 American troops. In terms of coalition losses, it has been the bloodiest month of the war that began March 20.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military for the first time acknowledged that the single deadliest incident of the war -- the collision of two Black Hawk helicopters in Mosul on Nov. 15 -- may have been caused by enemy action. The military had not previously publicly discussed the cause of the collision in which 17 soldiers died.

"It appears to be that one helicopter was hit" by a rocket-propelled grenade, Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, told The Associated Press. "It appears that there was some form of ground fire, probably an RPG that hit one which caused one to collide."

The South Koreans -- electricians for the Seoul-based Ohmoo Electric Co. laying power lines near the northern city of Tikrit -- were shot Sunday while riding in a civilian car near Tikrit, said Lee Kwang-jae, director general of South Korea's Foreign Ministry.

Two other South Koreans were wounded in the attack, Lee said. South Korea's Yonhap news agency identified them as Lee Sang-won and Lim Dae-shik, and said one suffered critical injuries. The agency didn't identify the dead.

At the scene of the attack Sunday, a blood-spattered, bullet-ridden SUV sat by the side of the road between Tikrit and Samarra.

Sgt. Robert Cargie, spokesman for the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, said an attack on a convoy near Samarra on Sunday afternoon left three people dead. It was not clear whether he was referring to the incident involving the South Koreans, and if so, who the third victim was.

U.S. officials said that a Colombian civilian working as a military contractor was killed Saturday morning in a roadside ambush in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad on the highway to Tikrit.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said insurgents opened fire with small arms on the convoy, killing the man who worked for the U.S. defense contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., which was formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

KBR said in a statement that an employee working to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure died of a bullet wound when his five-vehicle convoy came under attack near Kirkuk, which is 100 miles north of Balad. Another employee and a subcontractor were injured, it said.

KBR didn't give the victim's nationality, and it wasn't clear whether the attack was the same as that announced by the U.S. military.

On Saturday, gunmen in a car -- apparently in coordination with others waiting by the side of the highway -- ambushed a convoy of Spanish military intelligence agents, killing seven. One Spaniard escaped from the attack as young men kicked the bodies and chanted pro-Saddam slogans.

On Sunday, the charred remains of the car could be seen in a watery ditch at the side of the road just south of Baghdad, with a group of villagers scavenging its parts and posing triumphantly atop it. Blood and a broken pair of glasses could be seen in bushes nearby.

Two Japanese diplomats also were killed Saturday north of Baghdad when they stopped to buy food and drinks at a roadside stand, Lt. Col. William MacDonald said. The diplomats, on their way to attend a reconstruction conference, were not traveling with a military escort. Their Iraqi driver was also reported killed.