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| Sunday, 19 December 2004 |
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Iraq violence surges ahead of elections BAGHDAD, Saturday (AFP) Several Turkish embassy guards, on their way from Turkey to Baghdad, were killed in an armed attack in Mosul, as Iraq braced for new violence Saturday ahead of January's historic elections. And with trials of members of Saddam Hussein's regime set to begin, the former president met a member of his legal counsel for the first time since his capture in December 2003, but a human rights group slammed the tribunal as flawed. In a statement, the Turkish foreign ministry did not specify how many guards died in Friday's attack, but CNN Turk television put the number at four. One of the guards and a driver survived the attack and returned to Turkey, while two other guards made it safely to the embassy in Baghdad, the statement said. "Our authorities are investigating the matter and trying to obtain more information from the Iraqi interim government and local officials," the statement added. About 70 Turkish nationals, mainly truck drivers, have so far been killed in Iraq, most of them in road violence and several at the hands of hostage-takers. Earlier, four people were hauled from their car by masked men and killed, witnesses said, adding that one of them may have been a non-Iraqi. "After taking them out of the vehicle, the attackers shot three men dead and decapitated the fourth," who spoke a foreign language, said Abdallah Zibeidi. As night fell, four bodies lay in the road, while masked men in a nearby car forbade anyone from approaching. Three people were killed in a missile attack on a Kirkuk camp for Kurdish returnees in what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to stoke communal tensions in Iraq's northern oil capital ahead of next month's elections. A US marine was also killed in action during operations Thursday in the restive Al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, the US military said. |
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