Seven Spanish intelligence officers, two Japanese diplomats and two US soldiers were killed in an upsurge of violence in Iraq just as US commanders hailed the success of two massive counter-insurgency operations in stemming armed resistance to their seven-month-old occupation.

In the latest such attack, two South Koreans were killed and two others seriously wounded in an attack on a highway near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, the South Korean foreign ministry said, cited by the Yonhap news agency.

The US military also said a Colombian contractor was killed in northern Iraq Saturday, following the killings of two American soldiers in an attack near the Syrian border as the death also toll climbed for US forces.

The killing of the Spanish and Japanese Saturday was a clear attempt by the United States' Iraq foes to undermine the willingness of some of its strongest allies to maintain their participation in the increasingly costly occupation.

The seven Spanish agents were killed on their way from the capital to the town of Hilla, the coalition's headquarters for south-central Iraq, where Spain's 1,300 troops are deployed, hitherto a relative haven of tranquillity for coalition personnel, the US military said.

A correspondent of London-based television Sky News, who was on the scene before coalition troops, said he saw a small crowd of Iraqis gathered around the bodies, chanting praise for Iraq's fugitive former strongman Saddam Hussein.

David Bowden said that as he drove back to Baghdad with his camera crew, he came across a body in the middle of the night-time road.

"We looked around and there were three other (bodies) on the other side of the road," he said, adding that there were also two burned out cars.

The correspondent said he saw one Iraqi youth with his foot on the chest of one of the corpses, while a boy, aged eight or nine, was pretending to kick the body.

An eighth officer from Spain's national intelligence service, CNI, was slightly wounded in the ambush, Defence Minister Federico Trillo said in Madrid.

The attack brought to 10 the number of Spanish personnel killed in Iraq and prompted Trillo to hold a crisis meeting in Madrid overnight before announcing he was headed to Baghdad.

A Spanish spokesman here said that Trillo was coming here to bring home the bodies of the slain Spaniards, not for any wider mission.

In a further blow to US efforts to bolster foreign support for its operations in Iraq, two Japanese diplomats were killed on their way to an aid meeting in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, still a bastion of support for the ousted president.

The attack, the first against Japanese personnel here, came as the two diplomats stopped at a food stall to buy food and drink just 15 kilometres (10 miles) short of the restive town, which is now a major US base.

A Lebanese, said by Japan to be their driver, was also wounded.

"The three persons had stopped for food and drink when attackers fired small-calibre weapons at them," said Colonel Bill MacDonald, spokesman for the US 4th Infantry Division, based in Tikrit.

"The three were taken to a Tikrit hospital. The condition of the wounded individual is unknown," said MacDonald, speaking shortly before the opening of the aid conference at the division's fortified headquarters compound in the town.

It was not immediately clear why the diplomats had taken the risk of stopping in an area known to be deeply hostile to the coalition.

In a further attack Saturday, in the far west of Iraq near the Syrian border, two US soldiers were killed and a third wounded when their convoy came under rocket-propelled and small arms fire on the main highway through the Euphrates valley.

The soldiers from the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment (3rd ACR) were ambushed east of the troubled border town of Husaybah on Saturday afternoon, said a statement from their headquarters.

"Confirmed reports are that two US soldiers were killed and one wounded," the regional command said Sunday. "The wounded soldier was subsequently medevaced to a nearby field hospital."

The latest casualties brought to 186 the number of US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq since US President George W. Bush announced an end to hostilities on May 1.

The rash of attacks came just as the coalition's top commander in Iraq hailed a sharp downturn in the insurgency which has dogged the US-led occupation and which sharply intensified during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan that ended last week.

Boasting of a "great two weeks" for the coalition, ground forces chief Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez told a briefing in Baghdad that two massive onslaughts launched against the insurgents in two of their main strongholds had led to a reduction of more than 30 percent in attacks.

In the Tikrit region, where the Japanese died, Sanchez spoke of a "significant reduction" in insurgent activity. Around Baghdad, where the Spaniards were killed, the US general boasted a 70 percent decline in violence.

The US commander acknowledged that the US military's growing success in defending its own had prompted a switch by the insurgents to attacks on the less well defended targets of the Iraqi police and Washington's coalition allies.

"This is an attempt clearly to drive a wedge between the Iraqi people and the coalition, between the coalition and its international elements," said Sanchez, adding that it would not succeed.

"I think a strategic mistake has been made by our enemy," he said of recent wave of suicide attacks against the new Iraqi police trained by the coalition in which civilian bystanders, including children, have also been killed.

Copyright 2003 AFP

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