Baghdad, Iraq – The U.S. military is considering offering protection to foreign diplomats in Baghdad after al-Qaeda agents said they killed three Arab envoys this month, the American ambassador said Thursday.
“Coalition forces … are planning to look at this problem and see what could be done to fix the security for the diplomats,” Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters. “It’s very important for foreign diplomats who come here to have a sense of security.”
He spoke a day after Iraq’s most feared terrorist group announced it killed two Algerian diplomats – including the country’s chief envoy in Iraq – because of their government’s ties to the United States and its crackdown on Islamic extremists.
Chief envoy Ali Belaroussi and diplomat Azzedine Belkadi were kidnapped outside their embassy in Baghdad’s western neighborhood of Mansur. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility.
The group – headed by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – also claimed responsibility for the kidnap-slaying of Egypt’s top envoy and the attempted abduction of two other Muslim diplomats in a campaign to undercut support for the new Iraqi government within the Arab and Muslim world.
The United States has urged Arab and Muslim countries to deepen their diplomatic ties to Baghdad – a strategy that seems at risk after the brutal attacks.
Khalilzad said no final decision had been made on offering protection, and some Arab diplomats may fear that the presence of U.S. forces around diplomatic missions might actually draw insurgent attacks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced Thursday that two American soldiers were killed and one was wounded in a roadside bombing the day before in Baghdad. Another American soldier died Wednesday in a nonhostile vehicle accident in central Iraq, the U.S. military said.
