American aid worker dies in Iraq ambush

By Associated Press
Thursday, January 18, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad shot up a convoy of nonprofit agency workers in an ambush that took the lives of an American woman and three bodyguards, while a suicide car bomber killed 17 Shiites at a teeming Sadr City market yesterday.

The attack on the marketplace came one day after car bombings killed scores of university students just two miles away, indicating that al-Qaeda-linked fighters are bent on a surge of bloodshed as U.S. and Iraqi forces gear up for a fresh neighborhood-by-neighborhood security sweep through the capital.

Although nobody claimed responsibility for either day’s car bombings, such attacks are the hallmark of Sunni militants, who appear to be taking advantage of a waiting period before the security crackdown to step up attacks on Shiites. There had been a relative lull in Baghdad violence since the first of the year.

An Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the attack on the Western convoy took place in Yarmouk, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad.

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