BAGHDAD, Iraq – Assailants ambushed a convoy of Britons on a northern Baghdad highway Sunday, killing one Iraqi security guard and a bystander, officials and witnesses said. U.S. soldiers came under fire in Najaf as an agreement to halt fighting there appeared to be unraveling.
Also Sunday, the top U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq ordered the Iraqi Governing Council to delay nominating a president for a caretaker government that will take power in July.
The attack in Baghdad occurred near dusk as a convoy of sport utility vehicles headed south in the city. Gunmen in an approaching vehicle opened fire, sending three of the four SUVs swerving off the road into barricades.
Crowds of Iraqi youths danced and cheered as rescuers dragged a bloodied body, wearing a flak vest, from the driver’s seat of one vehicle.
In London, the British Foreign Office said four Britons and another Iraqi jumped out of the vehicles, flagged down a passing Iraqi vehicle and escaped. None of the Britons was hurt, but the Iraqi was wounded, the statement said.
Today, two British civilians working for a security company died when a roadside bomb blew up their armored car near the coalition headquarters in Baghdad.
In Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Shiite politicians sought to save a three-day-old agreement with Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to end the standoff with U.S. soldiers in the holy city and restore government control there.
Under a deal announced Thursday with Shiite leaders, al-Sadr agreed to remove his fighters from the streets, and U.S. troops agreed to halt offensive operations around Najaf and Kufa. However, daily clashes since the agreement was announced have threatened to scuttle the deal.
Two American soldiers were wounded in the clashes around the Shiite holy city of Najaf, the military said Sunday.
On Sunday, U.S. troops and al-Sadr’s fighters exchanged gunfire near Najaf’s Valley of Peace cemetery. Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi met with al-Sadr’s aides Sunday night and afterward told reporters he had worked out a “detailed plan for the implementation” of the truce agreement and would present them to U.S. and Iraqi officials today.
In a report from Kufa, CNN said a “major firefight” broke out late Sunday when soldiers tried to secure a police station.
Meanwhile, Paul Bremer, who heads the Coalition Provisional Authority, intervened Sunday when the Iraqi Governing Council was on the verge of holding a vote to ratify its choice, Ghazi Ajil Yawer, a young tribal leader critical of the U.S. occupation.
Bremer and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi support former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi for the largely ceremonial post.
“Bremer came in and read them the riot act,” a Governing Council aide said.
Disagreements aside, it appeared possible that a government could be named as early as today.
In a separate development, a report said Iraq has seen a surge in human rights organizations, political parties and independent newspapers despite the occupation – groups almost unheard of under Saddam Hussein. The report was released Sunday by Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, an Arab think tank in Egypt.
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