KIRKUK/BAGHDAD - Anadolu Agency (A.A) correspondents Sami Tolga Adanali and Kenan Gurbuz were attacked by six gunmen in Iraq on Sunday.
Assailants who stopped the car carrying the A.A correspondents by opening fire on it and forced them to lie down together with the Arab driver of Iraq origin and the host, they seized the car, their passports, money and all valuable belongings.
Following the attack, correspondents went to the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad.
Sami Tolga Adanali explained the attack as saying, ''at about 10.15 a.m. today, our Iraqi Arab driver, Iraqi Arab host Abbas and we were attacked by six gunmen on the Kirkuk-Baghdad motorway while we were going to Baghdad as two hours left to reach Baghdad. Four of them were carrying Kanas assassination weapons and the remaining two had Kalashnikov rifles. All of them wrapped their faces with head scarves and they were speaking Kurdish. They waylaid our car, and we suppose that they were looters.''
''We told the Iraqi driver to step on the gas and not to stop. When the driver stepped on the gas, they pointed their weapons at our car and started to fire. One bullet pierced the windshield, passed through it and hit the seat. Luckily, we were not wounded. After this, the Iraqi driver stopped the car,'' he said.
''They took us out of the car and forces us to lie down. They did body search on all of us. We told them that we are journalists and Turkish citizens. They took whatever we were carrying. They took our two satellite phones, lap-top computers, two cameras and apparatus, our clothes in the car, passports and money. My friend Kenan had five thousand U.S. dollars and I had twelve hundred U.S. dollars. They also took our valuable belongings in the car,'' he said.
''Later, they shot in the air and wanted us to go away by saying 'yallah' which means 'get going'. They fired bullets everywhere since they stopped the car. They also opened fire after we left the area. We ran away. And they escaped with our car. The Iraqi driver and our host Abbas told us that they were Kurds,'' Adanali said.
Meanwhile, other A.A correspondent Kenan Gurbuz said that they had walked for a long time on the Kirkuk-Baghdad motorway after they had left the area.
''After walking for nearly one hour, we hitchhiked a car, and we went to the U.S. check-point in Al Halis city on the Kirkuk-Baghdad motorway. We explained the event to the U.S. officials. However, they told us that they could not do anything. They suggested us to apply to the Iraqi police. We went to the Iraqi police. They prepared an official report. They got information from the driver and the host. A person whom they called Hakem came and also he prepared another report. Later, we went to the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad,'' Gurbuz said.
Initiatives of the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the armed attack on the A.A correspondents continue.
(MS-UK) 06.07.2003