Eight Iraqi soldiers killed, one Baathist assassinated, 11 Iraqis killed in explosion targeting Polish contingent

Some 11 Iraqis were killed and other 23 others wounded including 8 coalition members as a result of an attack that targeted yesterday morning a Polish base in al-Hellah city to the south of Baghdad.

A spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq said that six of the Polish soldiers, together with one American and one Hungarian.

For his part, a Polish military spokesman told the Polish radio that two booby trapped cars broke into the Polish base, but one of them went off near the headquarters, while the soldiers were able to stop the other car by killing its driver. The spokesman said that the wounded soldiers are not in critical conditions.

Ahmad Kazem, the official at the educational hospital in al-Hella said "we received five bodies for three men and two women and 33 wounded all of them are Iraqis." News reports in Baghdad said the Polish forces tightly cordoned the site of the incident and banned access to it.

The report added that the attack, the first of its kind against the Polish headquarters, inflicted great damage in the neighboring houses noting that the two cars blew up, 200 m from the headquarters.

The Polish forces in Iraq supervises an area situated to the south of Baghdad, and assume the leadership of a multinational force of 9,000 soldiers, including 2400 Polish soldiers.

In Karbala to the south west of Iraq, army officer Salem Jayyar, the director of al-Amel quarters said that unidentified persons opened fire at a member in the Baath party group and he was killed immediately.

He added that the attackers planted an ambush to Hashem Rajeh Akkao and " fired bullets against him and this resulted in his immediate death."