VARIOUS: SPANISH DIPLOMAT JOSE ANTONIO BERNAL GUNNED DOWN AND KILLED OUTSIDE HIS HOME

Record ID: 377062

  • Title: VARIOUS: SPANISH DIPLOMAT JOSE ANTONIO BERNAL GUNNED DOWN AND KILLED OUTSIDE HIS HOME
  • Date: 11th October 2003
  • Summary: (W4) BAGHDAD, IRAQ (OCTOBER 9, 2003) (REUTERS) FOR DETAILED SHOTLIST 1 - 9 SEE PROD 14372/03: 1. SECURITY IN STREET, PAN TO LOCATION OF KILLING OF SPANISH AMBASSADOR'S DEPUTY JOSE ANTONIO BERNAL, GUNNED DOWN OUTSIDE HIS HOUSE ON OCTOBER 9TH 2. VARIOUS OF POOL OF BLOOD ON THE GROUND, MIXED WITH MUD 3. (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) AHMED ISMAIL, EY
  • Embargoed: 26th October 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BAGHDAD, IRAQ/ ANTALYA, TURKEY
  • City:
  • Country: Turkey Iraq
  • Reuters ID: LVA464U5F4BE6PNG2R7C441ZNX42
  • Story Text: A Spanish diplomat is gunned down outside his home in Baghdad.

    Gunmen killed a Spanish diplomat in Baghdad on
    Thursday (October 9), shooting him down in the street as he
    fled his home in just bare feet and undershorts.

    Jose Antonio Bernal was killed near his home in the
    upmarket Mansur neighbourhood, location of many embassies
    and homes of diplomats.

    Witnesses said three men pulled up in a brown car
    outside the diplomat's two-storey house, surrounded by a
    two metre high white wall, at about 7:30 a.m., about 30
    minutes before Bernal would normally leave to walk to the
    nearby embassy.

    They said one was wearing a black turban and appeared
    to be a Shi'ite cleric. The other two pointed pistols at
    several unarmed security guards and threatened to kill them
    if they interfered.

    "Three people came, knocked on the gate, the diplomat
    opened the door, they fought with each other and the deputy
    ran out of the house. The attackers shot him, he fell, they
    caught up with him and shot him again," said Ahmed Ismail,
    a security guard at the nearby Sudanese club.

    The gunmen chased Bernal for 50 yards (metres) firing
    their pistols. Bernal was just 10 yards from reaching a
    busy highway where he might have found safety when he was
    shot in the head.

    The chilling assassination raised new questions over
    security in Baghdad as the suburb is one of the most
    heavily patrolled and protected in the city.

    Bernal, 34, was an air force sergeant working for
    intelligence services at the Spanish embassy. He was
    married with a daughter.

    The motive for the shooting was unclear. But Spain
    backed the U.S.-led war on Iraq and has since sent troops
    to the country to help restore order. Spain has about
    1,300 troops in Iraq, mostly concentrated in Shi'ite Muslim
    areas south of Baghdad.

    One of Bernal's friends, Malik Kafouri, an Iraqi-born
    Spanish national, blamed U.S. forces and the Spanish
    government for the death of his friend. Kafouri said U.S.

    forces were not providing enough security to Iraq and
    Baghdad. But he also condemned the Spanish government for
    failing to explain the role of Spanish troops now stationed
    in and around Najaf.

    "They are here to build the country, they are not here
    to fight the country and this is the big fault of the
    Spanish embassy and the big fault of the Spanish
    government; and they are actually here to build schools and
    hospital and benefit Iraq. Nobody knows why they are here
    and this is the big fault," he said.

    The Spanish government of Prime Minister Jose Maria
    Aznar has been an unflagging supporter of U.S. President
    George W. Bush on Iraq and is scheduled to host a donors
    conference on Iraq in Madrid in two weeks.

    Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio offered
    condolences and said the government had launched an
    investigation into the circumstances of the killing.

    "My first comment is of course a comment of condolences
    for the family, he has a young daughter, and wife and
    family, and friends, this is the first comment. For us, as
    all deaths, any death is a tragedy, and this one is no
    exception and we are waiting to know the circumstances to
    draw conclusions. Now it is too early, now it is time just
    as I said, for condolences, for instructions to get back
    the corpse and that's what we are doing," Palacio told
    journalists.

    Palacio was in Antalya in Turkey for a two-day
    Mediterranean Forum of foreign ministers (FOROMED).

    Occupation forces in Iraq and diplomats in Baghdad have
    become targets of what the Americans consider elements
    loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein.

    The United Nations headquarters has been hit twice by
    suicide bombs, including a major attack on August 19 that
    killed 22 people including the lead U.N. diplomat in
    Baghdad, Sergio Vieira de Mello. The Jordanian embassy was
    hit by a truck bomb on August 7 that killed at least 17
    people.

    About two hours after Bernal's killing, a suicide
    bomber attacked a police station in a poor Shi'ite area of
    the capital, killing at least nine people including himself.


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