Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Bremer attacked by rebels - U.S

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Bremer attacked by rebels - U.S

    Bremer attacked by rebels - U.S

    BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The American administrator of Iraq escaped unharmed from a rebel ambush in Baghdad earlier this month, senior U.S. officials say.

    Paul Bremer was traveling in an armored civilian vehicle in west Baghdad on the same day Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited the Iraqi capital although he was not in the convoy.

    Earlier, Bremer said media reports that he had survived an assassination attempt on December 6 were true. "Thankfully I am still alive, and here I am in front of you," Reuters quoted him as saying.

    However, Pentagon officials later told CNN the attackers, who began the ambush by setting off a roadside bomb, probably did not know the convoy carried Bremer, saying the vehicles simply presented a target of opportunity.

    Officials said they did not believe this was an assassination attempt.

    Guerrillas followed the explosion by attacking with small arms fire. The convoy sped off and no one was hurt.

    The area where the ambush took place is near Baghdad International Airport, where many such attacks have occurred.

    Dan Senor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said Bremer had not changed his schedule of touring Iraq since the incident and was traveling to the southern city of Basra on Friday.

    Iraqis are seeing no let up in attacks since the capture of former President Saddam Hussein last weekend.

    Other high-profile Americans have also come under attack in postwar Iraq.

    In October, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in Baghdad's Rasheed hotel when it was hit by several missiles.

    Bremer and other senior American officials live in a huge palace complex once inhabited by Saddam and his bodyguards and intelligence agents.

    The compound is surrounded by barbed wire and blast walls and described as the most secure place in Baghdad. The area has been hit by mortar shells several times in night attacks.

    News of the ambush on Bremer came as an explosion destroyed a building occupied by Iraq's major Shiite political party, killing a woman, according to Iraqi police and a Shiite party official.

    The building housed the headquarters for Badr Brigade, the military branch of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, according to Mohammed al-Hashimi, an aide to Iraqi Governing Council President Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is also an SCIRI leader.

    http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/...mer/index.html
    "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."
Working...
X