Deputy of Baghdad police assassinated in car with his son First Edition

• Published in: Independent (London, England : 1986)
• Main Author: Robert Fisk in Baghdad
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 11.01.2005
• Subjects: Nayef, Ali
• ISSN: 0951-9467

Last week, gunmen assassinated the governor of Baghdad, [Ali Nayef] al- Haidari, who was taking a pre-arranged security route to his office. Six of his bodyguards were also shot dead. The route that his convoy took was supposedly known only to the police. Mr Haidari even had a second route ready in case his bodyguards chose to change his journey at the last moment. Residents living close to the scene of the ambush reported that insurgents had even planted a bomb on the secondary road in case Mr Haidari took the other option. American troops - if in far fewer numbers - do suffer those consequences. Yesterday, two more US soldiers were killed when a bomb destroyed their Abrams tank in Baghdad - only four days after another set of explosives killed seven Americans in a supposedly impregnable Bradley fighting vehicle. Hitherto, American soldiers were most vulnerable in their often soft-skinned Humvee vehicles but now the insurgents are succeeding in destroying state-of-the-art US armour. The bombs - in effect, large amounts of shells and explosives wrapped up to create landmines - demonstrate all too clearly that America's opponents have large and near- unlimited supplies of ordnance.