A U.S. soldier was killed in a drive-by shooting Monday in the northern city of Mosul as Korean engineers and Bangladeshi diplomats joined the growing list of contractors, relief workers, and foreign officials leaving Iraq amid attacks against foreigners.
The soldier, a member of the 101st Airborne Division, was guarding a gas station when a car pulled up 50 yards away and the gunmen inside opened fire, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad.
Three other U.S. soldiers were killed and one injured Monday when two Stryker infantry carrier vehicles they were riding in rolled into a canal 30 miles north of Baghdad, The Associated Press reported. Hostile fire was not involved.
The deadly gas station shooting was the latest in a spate of insurgent attacks in Mosul, once known as a corner of calm in the troubled Sunni heartland. In still another incident in Mosul on Monday, three U.S. soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb, a spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said.
The fatal drive-by came despite what Kimmitt called a general decline during the past week in attacks on American soldiers, to an average of 18 per day, from a high in November of more than 40. U.S. commanders credit a new offensive, combining intelligence-gathering and armed raids, for reducing guerrillas’ success against U.S. troops. In one such raid Monday, troops in Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, discovered nearly $2 million in U.S. cash, a stash the military believes was being used to finance guerrilla attacks, Kimmitt said.
But as American forces report success in reducing the threat to themselves, Iraqi insurgents have turned their attention to more vulnerable targets: Iraqi police officers, foreign contractors, or anyone seen to be working with U.S.-led forces. In the latest attack, an Iraqi police officer died Monday trying to defuse a bomb planted near a government building in Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad.
Other recent guerrilla attacks have killed seven Spanish intelligence agents, two Japanese diplomats, and a Colombian contractor. After bombings during summer, the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross withdrew some workers.
On Monday, more than 40 Korean engineers working to rebuild Iraq’s electrical system boarded a bus for Jordan.
Likewise, the government of Bangladesh announced Monday that it was evacuating its embassy staff to Jordan after receiving an e-mail containing a threat to bomb the mission.
Dan Senor, a spokesman for the U.S. civilian authority in Iraq, said he believed the Korean workers were halting work only for a “security assessment,” and urged foreign nationals in Iraq to stay put.
“As they withdraw because of intimidation by foreign terrorists and former regime elements, the terrorists win and the foreign regime elements win,” he said.
