Insurgents strike at third diplomat in Baghdad

updated 4:53 p.m. ET July 5, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen opened fire on a convoy carrying Pakistan's envoy to Iraq on Tuesday in the third attack on a senior diplomat in three days, police sources said.

The sources said two cars of gunmen fired at the convoy in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad but sped off after guards returned fire. Nobody was reported hurt, they said.

Earlier on Tuesday gunmen wounded Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, the top envoy from Bahrain. Egypt's envoy, Ihad al-Sherif, was kidnapped over the weekend.

Iraq's government spokesman said the attacks on the Egyptian and Bahraini diplomats were part of an effort to intimidate countries from bolstering diplomatic ties to the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

“The aim is clear, just to create a state of fear,” Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kuba said. Al-Sherif’s kidnapping “was an attempt to ... scare the other diplomatic missions so that they won’t expand their presence in Iraq.”

Baghdad had indicated last week that the Egyptian diplomat would soon become the first Arab envoy in Baghdad with the full rank of ambassador since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Bahraini diplomat shot
The Bahraini diplomat, al-Ansari, was shot on his way to work in western Baghdad, said Dr. Muhanad Jawad of Yarmouk Hospital. Al-Ansari was treated for a shoulder wound and was released, witnesses said.

“There was an attempt to kidnap him by gunmen when he was on his way from his house to the Bahrain mission in Baghdad,” Bahrain Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Yousef Mahmoud said in a report carried by the official Bahrain News Agency.

The tiny Gulf state of Bahrain is a close American ally and home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which played a support role during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

No word on Egyptian envoy's fate
There was still no word Tuesday on the fate of the kidnapped Egyptian envoy, al-Sherif. Witnesses said the abductors accosted him Saturday night in western Baghdad and shoved him into the trunk of a car after pistol-whipping him. They accused him of being an American spy, witnesses said.

Egypt announced last month that it would become the first Arab country to post an ambassador to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

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