Spain and Japan Vow to Fight "Terror" - Two Koreans Killed in New Iraq Attack

30/11/2003| IslamWeb

Madrid and Tokyo vowed not to give in to "terrorists" after seven Spanish intelligence officers and two Japanese diplomats were killed in Iraq as resistance stepped up attacks on foreign occupiers. In the latest such attack, two South Koreans were killed and two others seriously wounded in an attack on a highway near Tikrit, the South Korean foreign ministry said, cited by the Yonhap news agency. The US military also said a Colombian contractor was killed in northern Iraq Saturday, following the killings of two American soldiers in an attack near the Syrian border as the death also toll climbed for US forces. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar vowed Spain would stay in Iraq despite the killing of the seven agents, whose bodies were flown home Sunday from an airbase in Kuwait accompanied by Defence Minister Federico Trillo and intelligence chief Jorge Dezcallar. The members of Spain's National Intelligence Centre were killed Saturday in an ambush south of Baghdad. An eighth Spanish agent was injured. Despite opposition calls for the Spanish contingent to be brought home Aznar said: "We will fulfill our commitments with loyalty and serenity." Aznar, who has been a solid ally of London and Washington throughout the Iraq crisis, said the slain agents were doing their job to help rebuild Iraq. In Tokyo, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters late Sunday he was angry at the killings of the two diplomats, fatally shot with their Iraqi driver on Saturday afternoon as they stopped for food on a highway near Tikrit, north of Baghdad. Koizumi added his support for the US-led reconstruction was unwavering and that Japan's plan of sending troops there "has not changed." Japan has said it would send troops to help with humanitarian and reconstruction needs to non-combat zones in Iraq, but only when the security situation permits. Following the killings of the Koreas on a highway near Tikrit, the foreign ministry in Seoul said the identities of the two dead men had not yet been confirmed, but named the two wounded as Lee Sang-won and Im Dae-shik. A Colombian civilian contractor was also shot dead and two colleagues wounded in an attack on a convoy in northern Iraq, a US army commander said Sunday. "Yesterday morning near Balad one civilian contractor, a citizen of Colombia, was killed and two associates were wounded when attackers using small calibre weapons fired on a convoy," US military deputy director for operations Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a Baghdad press conference. He gave no further details of the attack near the town about 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of the capital. **PHOTO CAPTION*** US soldiers load the bodies of the dead Japanese diplomats. (Al-Jazeera)