STOCKHOLM, Nov 10: Unidentified assailants opened fire on Sunday on a vehicle carrying Swedish and Iraqi aid workers after a dramatic high-speed car chase in southern Iraq, but there were no casualties.

The vehicle was hit by several rounds of automatic weapons fire, but the four people on board were unhurt, Gunnar Hallgren of the Hoppets Stjarna (Star of Hope) charity said.

The assailants opened fire after chasing them for five kilometres on a road between the southern port of Basra and the Kuwaiti border, Mr Hallgren said by telephone from Kuwait. “It was pure Wild West,” he said.

“We drove at 190 kilometres an hour. One bullet fired by the assailants passed just behind the headrest on the front seat and another above the head of the driver,” Robert Chehade, a Swede, who was “driving with his head at the level of the steering wheel,” said Mr Hallgren.

The attack took place about 30kms from the Kuwaiti border. The aid workers finally managed to escape their pursuers by taking their four-wheel-drive vehicle onto a special road for US and British troops.

“The motive for the attack was probably to scare all the Westerns so that they leave (Iraq). The aim (of the assailants) is to cause fear and chaos,” said Mr Hallgren.—AFP