ISLAMABAD, July 5: Pakistan is to withdraw its ambassador from Iraq after the envoy said he had a “very narrow escape” from an attack on his convoy in Baghdad on Tuesday.
Envoy Younis Khan will be shifted to the Jordanian capital Amman following the assassination attempt, the third attack in four days on a foreign diplomat in Iraq’s main city, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said.
Iraq’s interior ministry said the attack happened at an intersection in the upmarket Mansur district, not far from where Bahrain’s envoy was wounded just hours earlier in an apparent kidnap attempt.
“I am safe but it was a very narrow escape,” Mr Khan said by telephone from Baghdad.
Mr Khan, who was only posted to Baghdad around two months ago, said gunmen in two cars opened fire on his vehicle when he was around a kilometre from the Pakistani embassy.
“I was returning to my home when two cars came from behind. There were armed men inside and they fired at my car. But luckily the bullets didn’t hit my car,” Mr Khan said.
Security guards in another car travelling with him immediately opened fire on his attackers, Mr Khan said, adding that “some bullets hit one of the attackers’ cars.”
“We sped out of danger but it was an extremely dangerous situation,” he said.
Egypt’s ambassador-designate to Iraq Ihab al-Sharif was abducted in Baghdad on Saturday in the first incidence of what is thought to be a new tactic by insurgents to target Muslim envoys.
Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Naeem Khan said no one was injured in the attack on the envoy’s convoy.
“We have been watching the security situation in Iraq and we have decided to relocate the ambassador to Amman. But this in no way dilutes our commitment to continuing to work for a peaceful and stable Iraq,” he said.
“The decision is geared solely to ensure the safety of our personnel in Iraq and will be reviewed the moment we detect any improvement in the security situation there.”
Ambassador Khan added: “It is not safe because the security situation here is extremely bad.”
Pakistan opposed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq despite being a key ally in the US “war on terror”. It has refused requests from both the United States and the Iraqi leadership to send peacekeeping troops.
However in April, an employee at the Pakistani embassy in Baghdad was abducted as he went to a mosque for evening prayers.
Malik Mohammad Javed, a non-diplomatic official at the Pakistani mission, was freed two weeks later after Islamabad sent a special envoy to the Iraqi capital.—AFP
