Spanish Recon Soldiers Attacked

[NcDeuce]

Two Spanish Recon Soldiers Killed in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Attackers killed two members of a Spanish intelligence team as it returned from a mission, the Spanish defense ministry said.

The attack occurred in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, said Capt. Ivan Morgan, a spokesman for a multinational division in southern Iraq. The eight-member team was from Spain's National Intelligence Center, an official with the Spanish defense ministry said in Madrid.

Spain was one of the staunchest supporters of the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein earlier this year and sent 1,300 soldiers to help maintain order.

In previous attacks, a Spanish diplomat attached to Spain's intelligence agency was assassinated near his residence in Baghdad on Oct. 9, and a Spanish navy captain was killed in the truck bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19.

Other partners in the U.S.-led coalition have also been targeted. On Nov. 12, a truck bomb outside the Italian barracks in Nasiriyah killed 19 Italians and 14 others in an apparent attempt to weaken the resolve of Washington's allies.

On Thursday, insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Italian mission in Baghdad, causing damage but no injuries.

R.I.P.

[rafaelcb]

It seems that up to 7 of the 8 members of the team have been killed. MSNBC and CNN report two deaths, but 'El Mundo' says up to 7 intelligence officers are missing when their vehicles were attacked. The helicopters mentioned in the MSNBC article were not attacked, but part of the rescue effort.

La muerte no es el final :(

[rokus2595]

U.S. Says Iraqi Police May Have Coordinated Attacks on G.I.s
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 29, 2003
Filed at 12:38 p.m. ET

Attackers killed two members of a Spanish intelligence team Saturday as it returned from a mission south of Baghdad, the Spanish Defense Ministry said. A journalist who drove by the scene said he saw four bodies in the road, a jubilant crowd kicking them.

A television cameraman who drove by the scene at 5:15 p.m., shortly after the attack, said he saw two destroyed vehicles -- one still burning -- and four bodies on the road.

The cameraman for Britain's Sky News, Adam Murch, described a jubilant crowd kicking the bodies. He told The Associated Press some in the crowd said the bodies belonged to CIA agents. He said the crowd appeared hostile and the journalists were forced to leave.

www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html

[budanski]

Sympathies to our Spanish allies and their loss.

[Guttorm]

Sympathies to our Spanish allies and their loss.

[Vance]

Ditto.

[Trident-za]

It seems 6 were killed.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=world&cat=iraq

RIP.

[Ratamacue]

RIP guys,

[Dalleer]

I just saw a short story about this on our news. The story showed a body of a Spanish soldier lying on the ground beside a vehicle.

And then there was a group of three Iraqi civilians cheering and shouting, one of the Iraqis was kicking the body lightly with his shoe.

Showing respect for the dead there...

[MARINO]

The problen is that we can't answer to this attack, i hope that US force will do a great job.
RIP

Cuando la pena nos alcanza,
del compañero perdido.
Cuando el adiós dolorido,
busca en la fe su esperanza.

En tu palabra confiamos
con la certeza que Tú:

ya le has devuelto a la vida,
ya le has llevado a la luz.
Ya le has devuelto a la vida,
ya le has llevado a la luz.

http://www.himnonacional.org/public/descargar.asp?id=75

http://www.bragancanet.pt/picote/figuras/bnd_espanha.gif

[Argyll]

stands at 7 now!
These guys in that region do not want a democracy guys,and this is going to get very very bloody!

Condolences to the families and friends

[Frost]

unfortunately this region is the place where all the sadam-lovers live. The south and north are relatively safe. The scene reminded me of somalia. It's a horrible sight to see the dead soldiers being draged across the streets and being kicked at by those people. A soldier being killed is a part of war, but this in entire different thing. It drives me mad :(


My deepest sympathies to the family and brothers in arms of the fallen soldiers :(

[Uncle Chô]

:|


BAGHDAD (*******) - Seven Spanish intelligence agents were killed on Saturday in an attack on their unmarked vehicles south of Baghdad, Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo said, the latest assault on a close American ally.

He said in a nationally televised address that another agent was slightly hurt in the attack by guerrillas using rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.

In Japan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said two Japanese who may have been diplomats were killed in an apparent ambush near Tikrit, hometown of Iraq's ousted leader Saddam Hussein 110 miles north of Baghdad.

"There is a good possibility they are Japanese diplomats," spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said.

Reports of the attacks came hours after the top military commander in Iraq said attacks against U.S. forces had fallen sharply in recent weeks, despite figures showing November to be the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began in March.

U.S. Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez said anti-American insurgents had struck fewer times in the past seven days than in the previous week and put the reduction down to more aggressive tactics by U.S. forces.

A ******* television crew at the scene of the attack on the Spaniards about 45 km (28 miles) from Baghdad filmed a burned-out vehicle surrounded with spent shell casings and scattered bits of flesh.

The attacks on both the Spaniards and on Japanese are likely to embarrass their respective governments.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar defied public opinion at home to send around 1,300 peacekeepers to Iraq after strongly endorsing the U.S. and British decision to invade the country on March 20.

COMPLICATE TOKYO'S PLANS

The ambush on the Japanese, in which a non-Japanese driver was wounded, is likely to complicate efforts by Tokyo, Washington's closest Asian ally, to decide whether to send non-combat troops to help rebuild Iraq. Voters are increasingly nervous about the dangers involved.

A cameraman from Britain's Sky News television said in Baghdad after he and Sky reporter David Bowden had stumbled across the ambush on the Spaniards near Hilla:

"There were three bodies on the side of the road and one in the grass island between the two sides of the highway. The lead vehicle was very burned and the second vehicle was burned...

"People said they were CIA. Maybe they did not know they were Spanish...Two Iraqi policemen on motorcycles drove by and did not stop at all at the scene."

Bowden said: "I got the impression it was an IED attack (improvised explosive device). It just seemed like they just waited for a...convoy to drive by and they attacked.

"There was a lot of traffic. There was one Iraqi youth standing with his foot on one of the bodies and then a child of about nine started to pretend he was kicking it.

"Some of the men were wearing checkered Arab scarves across their faces. People around the bodies were chanting 'We sacrifice our souls and blood for you Saddam (Hussein)'."

The Spanish force is part of a Polish-led multinational contingent responsible for security in the south-central part of the country.

Aznar stood shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a meeting on the eve of the invasion.

"NO TO WAR" IN SPAIN

Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's hand-picked successor to run as the center-right ruling party candidate in March, said "This will not stop us...from our commitments to the Iraqi people."

The Socialist opposition, which consistently opposed the U.S.-led invasion, expressed solidarity with the armed forces, and a minute of silence was held at the start of several televised Spanish soccer league matches.

But shouts of "No to war!" could be heard at one stadium in Madrid when the tribute ended.

Spain had earlier lost two other military men: an intelligence officer attached to the Spanish embassy gunned down in the street, and a Spanish naval officer who was among 22 people killed in a suicide bomb attack on the U.N. mission.
Just over two weeks ago, 19 Italians were killed in an attack on a military police barracks in southern Iraq, the worst military disaster for Italy since World War two.

Britain has lost 20 soldiers in military action. A Polish army officer has also died.

Since Washington declared major combat over on May 1, 185 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action, bringing the total U.S. military deaths --combat and non-combat -- since the start of the war to 436, according to the Pentagon.

[Nizark]

seven dead, one survived...some of the bystanders started yelling long live saddam and standing on the bodies, once the cameras turned on. It would seem like they didnt care until the camera started rolling. Just like the saddam days, they start doing anti American things once the cameras are on. FOX says that a young kid pretended to kick one of the bodies just as the long live saddam chants started.


either way, god protect the fallen soldiers

[rafaelcb]

From 'La razón', a spanish newspaper with good connections in the armed forces.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"double agents" of Sadam knew all the movements the assassinated agents of the CNI

The trip to the complete one of the cell of the secret service in two todoterrenos, a possible failure of security

Old agents of the services of security of Sadam Husein, caught like informers by the National Center of Inteligencia (CNI), but that would work like "double agents", could facilitate to the Iraqi guerrilla the data on the movements of the eight agents that integrated the cell del Spanish secret service, seven of as they perished yesterday in an ambush South al of Bagdad, according to informed to the REASON near sources al CNI. The trip in two todoterrenos Nissan Patrol, vehicles used in Iraq by official retinues, has been valued as a serious failure of security.


Enrique Montánchez - Madrid. -
The Iraqian guerrilla ended yesterday the cell to the complete one of the CNI in Iraq. Only one of the eight agents who integrated it managed to leave with life of the in the heat of wagon ambush, while they traveled in two vehicles todoterreno white Nissan Patrol, used habitually by the official retinues How knew to the guerrilla the route and movements of the Spanish spies?
This is the question that yesterday tried to respond the secret service, stunned by greater mazazo of all its history since in 1977 the Cesid was constituted, today CNI. The first answers aim, on the one hand, to a "very serious failure of security" when moving by the uncertain Iraqian highways all the together agents. Of another one, that the ambush is the evident test that they were "noticeable". Or what is the same: that the conglomerate of services and agents of the despuesto Sadam Husein, today clandestinizados, labeled under the generic name of the "resistance", knew its movements.
They knew where the Spaniards had met to eat and to speak of the next relief of a part of "celúla of intelligence" that the Center had unfolded in Iraq before the summer. They knew what vehicles used, and also when they undertook trip and the taken route. All these data allowed the guerrilla to locate in a point of the highway a commando armed with antitank grenade launcher RPG and automatic rifles Kalashnikov.

To infiltrate in the guerrilla

Sources near the CNI show that to guarantee the security of the Spanish troops -the main mission of the Spanish secret service in Iraq- is essential to try to make contact with the enemy and to infiltrate between the old members of the services of security of the dictator. "Many of them comprise of the guerrilla, and although they operate in watertight cells and they are not entrusted in the foreigners, is the only form to have information of first hand to know if our forces are in danger", they assure.
Indeed, in the performance of this mission it died assassinated in Bagdad, the past 9 of October, the agent of the CNI Jose Antonio Bernal Go'mez, sergeant first of the Air Force. It maintained contacts with average pictures of the dissolved "Mujabarat" (the frightful secret police of Sadam) and Shiite leaders ferociously repressed by this one. Bernal, as east newspaper informed, investigated the predisposition of the Shiite communities of Nayaf and Qadisiya towards the Brigade "unfolded Extreme Extra" in those two provinces. In means of the intelligence services one commented that the computational error was that a "agent of field" maintained contacts, at the same time, with expolicías of the "Mujabarat" and Shiite leaders. The declaration of the Iraqi police witness of the murder revealed that the assassin, dress with turban and Shiite túnica, accused the Spanish agent to have betrayed his confidence.

The bloody attack of has yesterday ended the unfolding of the CNI in Iraq. "La razón" revealed on 12 of November that the "cell of Spanish intelligence" in that country was formed by 14 agents of three secret services. The cell had been created from Madrid to make more cash and to coordinate better the "work field" of the CNI, the Division of Intelligence of the General Staff of Defensa (EMAD) and the Center of Intelligence and Security of the Tierra Army (CISET). These two last services maintain outstanding in Iraq six agents.
The most important profit of the "cell of intelligence", according to gathered east newspaper in the mentioned date, had been to reach an agreement with the Shiite leaders to preserve the security of the unfolded Spanish troops in the two provinces before mentioned of chií majority. Yesterday, the consulted sources showed the paradox of which "indeed those have died that was in charge to guarantee the security of our troops in Iraq", whereas the 1,300 men and women of the Ground forces and a similar number of the Central American military had undergone a single loss, excepted the sergeant who passed away by the fortuitous firings of a companion in "Spain Base".
They are very significant, and they portray in all his crudity the chaos that lives Iraq, the declarations of the head of the troops of the U.S.A., general Ricardo Sanchez, when recognizing yesterday that the Iraqian police contracted by the North American Army "could have communicated to the resistance the schedules and the routes of some of the attacked convoys". The Spanish High Commands assured at the end of the war that had been an error to license to the Army of Sadam and its Police, because when removing them from the quarters they had become uncontrollable. The CNI had tragic proof of it yesterday.

[NBC Trooper]

I didn't got that, they were Spanish spies or Spanish SF?

[MARINO]

They were spanish ofiicers of spanish army, but they were from the CNI(spanish CIA) their role was to contact with iraqi collaborators, to prevent attacks to spanish forces, and help in the reconstructions. They were making a reconnaisance tour because 4 of them should return to spain.

[rafaelcb]

I didn't got that, they were Spanish spies or Spanish SF?

Most of the staff of CNI comes from the military; most of the military that gets into CNI are SF-qualified.
For legal reasons, whan someone from the military becames part of CNI staff their military status is suspended; From a legal point of view they are civilians.

[MARINO]

---------------(Washington Post)----------------
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20031130/ts_washpost/a21908_2003nov29&cid=1802&ncid=1473
[...]
Witnesses interviewed about an hour after the Spaniards came under fire said the men were traveling in two sport-utility vehicles about 25 miles south of Baghdad when two cars filled with gunmen pulled alongside and began firing, forcing the lead Spanish vehicle off the road and into a muddy field.


The Spanish vehicles then came under fire from a band of attackers who had been waiting behind a concrete wall along the road, the witnesses said.


Although both vehicles were hit by rocket-propelled grenades and large numbers of bullets, some of the Spaniards returned fire and a gun battle ensued for more than 20 minutes, witnesses said.


"There was shooting everywhere," said Omar Hassan, 22, a student who claimed to have witnessed the attack and later joined the throng of celebrants. The Spaniards, he said, "were resisting a lot."


A fire sparked by a rocket-propelled grenade consumed the first car, witnesses said. An hour after the attack, it appeared that its occupants either had been killed by the time the fire began or were trapped inside. Two badly burned bodies, which witnesses said were from that vehicle, had been dragged out of the rear seats and placed in the median. Two other bodies remained in the front seats of the still-burning car.


The occupants of the second vehicle exited before their vehicle went up in flames and unsuccessfully sought to fend off the assailants while crouching on the road, witnesses said. One of them managed to run away and was rescued by a passing motorist, witnesses said, but the other three were killed, and after the attack their bodies were lying in the northbound lane of the highway more than 20 yards from their vehicle.
[...]
At the site of the attack in Latifiya, not every passing motorist joined in the horn-honking and waving. The driver of a white Toyota sedan rolled down his window and castigated Ali Sarhan and his friends.

"You enjoy what you're doing?" the driver growled. "You're killers."

"We're not killers," replied Sarhan, a student. "We're defending our country."

"By killing innocent civilians?" the driver shot back.

"They're not civilians," Sarhan responded. "They're Zionists."

The driver shot a look of disgust at Sarhan. "You're not going to get rid of them by doing nasty things like this," he said. Then he drove away.

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