BASRA, Dec 19: Iraq’s US administrator Paul Bremer said on Friday he had a narrow escape in a guerilla ambush earlier this month when his convoy was hit by an explosive device and came under small arms fire.

No one was hurt in the attack that coincided with a brief visit to Baghdad by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

“Yes, this is true, but thankfully I am still alive and here I am in front of you,” Mr Bremer told reporters on a visit to Basra when asked about reports of the Dec 6 ambush.

Mr Rumsfeld, who was making his third visit to Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s fall in April, was not in the convoy at the time of the attack.

Spokesman for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Dan Senor played down the possibility that Mr Bremer had been specifically targeted, saying “we have good reason to believe it was a random opportunistic attack”.

“The party was travelling from an impromptu meeting that was not scheduled,” Senor told a news conference in Baghdad.

“Nobody knew about the meeting. We have reason to believe it was a random opportunistic attack, not necessarily specifically targeting him,” he said, adding “It would be premature at this point to make that conclusion”.

The US television network NBC reported on Thursday that Mr Bremer’s convoy had been hit by an explosive device and came under small arms fire as it drove from Baghdad airport. The convoy was able to speed away.

Mr Senor said the attack took place “in an area that has frequently been the location of similar attacks in the past”.

Ambushes targeting occupying forces or Iraqi police are a daily occurrence in the country.

Another CPA official said that an inquiry into the attack was under way.

Mr Bremer, a counter-terrorism expert, travels in an armoured civilian vehicle convoy accompanied by a large group of burly, heavily armed guards.

Underlining security fears after bombings and rocket attacks, US soldiers have cut down trees along the dividing island on the airport road to deprive guerrillas of hiding places for attacks.

Other high profile Americans have also come under attack in Iraq.

In October, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the hawks who engineered the US invasion of Iraq, was in Baghdad’s Rasheed hotel when it was hit by a barrage of missiles.

Mr Bremer and other senior American officials live in a huge palace complex once inhabited by Saddam Hussein.

The compound is located in what is known as the green zone, a fortress surrounded by barbed wire and blast walls that is described as the most secure place in Baghdad. The area has been hit by mortar shells several times in night attacks.—Reuters