Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 9 December 2003 — In another blow to Iraq’s reconstruction efforts, 51 South Korean electrical workers left the country early yesterday after two colleagues were killed on a road near Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. The company they worked with said it would send all 60 workers home.

“Because of security reasons and because the workers want to return home, we have decided to bring them home as soon as we can make travel arrangements,” said Suh Sang-eun, an official at Seoul’s Omu Electric Co. Omu’s workers have been building electrical power transmission towers in northern Iraq since October. The unlisted company has won an order from Washington Group International Inc to build power transmission towers in Iraq.

Unidentified gunmen killed two Omu electricians and injured two others, also Omu employees, in an ambush near Tikrit on Nov. 30.

South Korea has said it would go ahead with plans to deploy more troops in Iraq despite the shooting. President Roh Moo-hyun has committed to sending more troops to join 675 medical and engineering staff, but faces a tough decision on whether to include combat forces.

Threats of attacks have also forced Bangladesh’s ambassador to Iraq to abandon the country and operate from neighboring Jordan. Ambassador Sarwar Hossain Mollah “is discharging his responsibilities from Jordan following threats of attacks as well as indiscriminate rocket and missile firings in Baghdad,” State Minister for Foreign Affairs Reaz Rahman said in Dhaka.