2003 Latifiya ambush

On November 29, 2003, a two-vehicle convoy carrying eight officers of Spain's National Intelligence Centre was ambushed by Iraqi insurgents near Latifiya, a town roughly 30 miles south of Baghdad. The officers were returning from Baghdad to Al Diwaniyah on a reconnaissance mission and had taken a route through local villages toward Mahmoudiyah.

According to Wikipedia's account of the incident, the first vehicle was led by Officer Alberto Martinez, seated alongside José Merino, with José Lucas and Ignacio Zanón in the back seat. The second vehicle carried Alfonso Vega, Carlos Baró, José Carlos Rodríguez, and José Manuel Sánchez. As the convoy approached Latifiya before 3:30 p.m., an insurgent vehicle following the Spanish cars accelerated and opened fire. The second car attempted to speed ahead to warn the lead vehicle, but insurgents caught up with the first car and began shooting, killing Martinez and wounding Lucas.

The insurgents then turned their fire on the second vehicle, forcing it off the road. Survivors from the first car regained control of their vehicle and moved toward the second in an attempt to regroup. Carlos Baró took command and tried to call for help from Diwaniyah but was shot during the attempt. The remaining officers tried to return fire with handguns and Steyr machine pistols but were outmatched by the attackers. The engagement lasted more than 20 minutes, and by its end all officers were dead except José Manuel Sánchez.

In the aftermath, a crowd of local Iraqis gathered at the scene and chanted slogans in support of Saddam Hussein. Members of the crowd dragged and kicked the bodies of the dead officers. Sánchez, the sole survivor, was spared by the crowd, taken to a nearby police station, and subsequently transported to Diwaniyah.

This dossier is based primarily on the Wikipedia summary of the ambush. Two additional sources — a contemporaneous Washington Post report published the day after the attack and a retrospective piece from English El País — are included in the citations as corroborating references cited by the Wikipedia article, though their specific text was not available for direct factual extraction in this dossier.