South Korea’s Omu Electric Company has decided to send its team stationed in Iraq back home after the latest resistance ambush took the lives of two employees.
Omu Electric was commissioned by US-based Washington Group International to build transmission towers in northern Iraq. Unidentified gunmen killed the workers on November 30 in a surprise attack near the town of Tikrit, the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Washington Group’s contract with Omu Electric is part of a $110 million US Army Corps contract that was awarded to the firm in October to support ongoing efforts to repair electrical infrastructure in Iraq. The deal includes the installation of two 80-megawatt electrical generators, rehabilitate three existing generators, and reconstruct a series of 400-kilovolt electrical transmission lines.
The bodies of the two engineers are expected to be transferred to South Korea on Monday, December 8, 2003. The casualties came over a fatal weekend in which agents and diplomats from Spain and Japan were also killed in separate incidents.
Iraqi resistance fighters are targeting foreign workers and diplomats in what appears to be an effort to evict the international community from the Arab state. United Nation (UN) humanitarian workers were ordered to stay home in August after a cement truck filled with explosives blew up outside the UN offices in Baghdad, killing envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 19 other people. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
