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Third Briton dies after Iraq bus attack

Martha Linden,Pa
Tuesday 29 November 2005 12:13 GMT
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A third British Muslim has died following a gun attack on a bus carrying pilgrims in Iraq.

Yahya Gulamali, 60, a businessman from Greenford, west London, died from his injuries in hospital following the attack which claimed the lives of two other British Shiite Muslims and injured two more.

The pilgrims, from the Husaini Masjid (mosque) in Northolt, west London, were en route to religious sites when they were ambushed by gunmen as they neared a checkpoint in the Dora neighbourhood on Sunday, according to Iraqi police.

Two of the dead were named yesterday as businessmen Saifuddin Makai, 39, from Streatham, south London, and Husain Mohammedali, 50, from Harrow, north-west London.

The group were on a pilgrimage to holy shrines at Kerbala, Najaf and Kufa, according to a friend of the victims, Shabbir Abidali.

Mr Abidali said Mr Gulamali had been transferred to the American Hospital in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad for emergency treatment but had died overnight.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman confirmed the news of the death.

Those wounded in the attack were Ali Qaiyoom, 46, from Harrow, and Miss Zehra Jafferjee, 60, from Wembley, north-west London.

The news of the third death comes after the Iraqi government pledged "every assistance" in helping to find British peace activist Norman Kember, kidnapped in Baghdad.

A retired professor, Mr Kember was snatched alongside two Canadians and an American in Baghdad on Saturday.

Mr Kember, 74, a grandfather and an ex-professor at a teaching hospital, is a former secretary of the Baptist Peace Fellowship and a trustee of the Christian peace organisation the Fellowship for Reconciliation.

The Foreign Office has not confirmed who he was working for or the location where he was kidnapped.

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