A GUNMAN in traditional Arab robe and headdress shot and killed a South African security guard in a Baghdad shop yesterday after accusing him of being a Jew, officials and witnesses said. Police sources had earlier said the victim was a Spaniard. ?He was a South African,? Health minister Khudier Abbas told Reuters. ?He worked in the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) with security, as a bodyguard.?

Witnesses said the man was shot in the head at around 06:45 GMT while shopping at a small supermarket in the Adhamiyah neighbourhood, a Sunni Muslim stronghold. His translator was wounded and rushed to a nearby hospital. Risks to foreigners in Iraq have spiralled this month with the abduction of about 50 foreign civilians. Most have been released unharmed but at least 26 foreign civilians and private security guards have been killed in violence in March and April, including an Italian killed by kidnappers.

?A gunman came in and shot them both,? Aslan Khalil, a worker at al-Hadba shop where the incident took place, told Reuters Television. ?When the gunman came in, he told us: «This is a Jew, why do you deal with him and sell to him?»? The owner of the supermarket was also wounded.

Another witness, Aydan Khalil, said the gunman had a keffiyeh headdress wrapped round his face and used an assault rifle. Afterwards, he left the shop and tried to get into the victim?s four-wheel-drive vehicle parked across the street. ?He tried to smash the car and then he turned and said, «I killed the Jew inside, you burn his car»,? Khalil said. The gunman then left in his own car.

Many South Africans, mostly employed by private security firms, work in Iraq. At least 26 foreign civilians and private security guards have been killed in violence in March and April, including an Italian killed by kidnappers. About 50 foreigners have been abducted this month. Most have been freed unharmed.

In the mainly Shi?ite southern city of Basra, families mourned their dead after suicide bombers killed 73 people, 17 of them children burned alive on their way to school. Five of the 99 people wounded in the blasts died overnight, hospital officials said, raising the death toll to 73.

Streets were quiet and most schools were closed after Wednesday?s co-ordinated bombings of police stations. Among the victims were eight kindergarten children and nine pupils of the Amjad Intermediate School for Girls whose minibuses flamed into an inferno after one explosion. The girls? school shut its gates yesterday. ?We are going to attend the funerals,? administrator Leila Abdullah said.

The blasts at three police stations in Basra, and at the police academy in nearby Zubeir, a mainly Sunni town, were the bloodiest attacks in the British-controlled zone since the start of the US-led occupation a year ago. President George W. Bush accused Osama bin Laden?s al Qaeda network of being behind the morning rush-hour attacks. ?They just blew up innocent Iraqis.? A senior military official in Baghdad said the simultaneous strikes bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda or its affiliates.

Fighting on two fronts

He pointed the finger at Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with suspected links to al Qaeda who is accused by US officials of orchestrating suicide attacks to spark a civil war between Iraq?s minority Sunnis and majority Shi?ites.

US forces have intensified battles with Sunni insurgents in the western city of Falluja this month and rolled back an uprising led by Shi?ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the south. About 1000 Sadr supporters carried mock coffins through Basra streets to protest against the police station bombings. ?Long live Sadr... No, no to America,? they chanted.

Witnesses said Falluja front lines were calm, though clashes erupted in the nearby town of Karma. A local official said police were collecting heavy weapons from fighters in Falluja under a peace deal announced by US forces on Sunday. A US general warned insurgents they had ?days not weeks? to hand over their arms or risk a renewed US offensive.

Lieutenant-General James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in western Iraq, said the response to a deal with Falluja civic leaders had been disappointing. ?We are not pleased at all with the turnover that we saw yesterday. The volume probably amounted to a pickup truck-full,? he told reporters at Camp Falluja, a US base close to the town. He described the weapons as ?junk?.

Conway questioned the ability of civic leaders in Falluja to persuade the insurgents to disarm. The US military is also demanding the surrender of those behind the murder and public mutilation of four American private security guards ambushed in Falluja on March 31.

Hopes for the release of three kidnapped Italian security guards dimmed yesterday as Italy?s government denied media reports it had paid a ransom to have them freed. Kidnappers have said they will kill the Italian hostages unless Italy withdraws its 2,700 troops from Iraq.

Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have decided to bring their troops home. But Poland said it was ready to keep its 2,500 soldiers in Iraq until Iraqis hold elections in January 2005, while Denmark said its 510 troops could expand their role. The occupation which followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein is due to end formally in 10 weeks? time, but this month?s bloodshed has clouded the run-up to the transition.

Since the start of the war in March last year, 511 US soldiers have been killed in combat, Pentagon figures show. More than 100 have been killed this month. (Reporting by Abdel-Razzak Hameed in Basra, Fadel Badran and Michael Georgy in Falluja, and Michael Battye, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad and Seif Fouad in Baghdad).

Alistair COOK