July 23, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 22, 1424

GENEVA, July 22: An international Red Cross aid worker was shot dead and his Iraqi driver was wounded when their car came under fire south of Baghdad on Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

The ICRC said in a statement that it did not know who was responsible for the attack on the car, which was marked with the Red Cross emblem, on the main road from the town of Hilla to the Iraqi capital.

“It was not as if they didn’t recognise it as a Red Cross vehicle, that was clear,” ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari said.

On Sunday, an Iraqi driver for an international aid agency was killed and a foreign aid worker was wounded when their United Nations convoy was attacked by gunmen on the road near Hilla, prompting the UN to review its security precautions in Iraq.

Nadisha Yassari Ranmuthu, a 37 year-old ICRC communications engineer from Sri Lanka, was killed on the spot in Tuesday’s attack, the ICRC said.

The driver, Mazen Hamed Rashid, a local employee, was taken to hospital in Hilla where he is being treated, it added.

“The ICRC is assessing the implications of this attack with a view to deciding its future course of action in Iraq,” an ICRC statement said.

“The ICRC firmly calls on all armed persons and groups to grant safe passage to all vehicles and staff working under the red cross and red crescent emblems and to allow them to perform their live-saving tasks,” it added.

The ICRC was one of the few international aid agencies to stay in Iraq and provide mainly medical aid during the US-led invasion.—AFP