Spanish soldier killed in accident in Iraq

THE Spanish Ministry of Defence announced on Thursday September 8 that on the previous day a soldier had been killed in a traffic accident in Iraq and that two of his colleagues had been injured and taken to hospital for observation.

The dead man, 25-year-old Private Aaron Vidal Lopez, a member of the 8^th Cavalry Regiment was unmarried and from Valencia whilst the two injured soldiers were identified as Corporal Felipe Capa Medina and Private Jesús Ángel Alacid García.

Reports say that the soldiers were in a Lince (Lynx) armoured car waiting to escort a convoy to a military base near Baghdad when an Iraqi tanker collided with the Spanish vehicle and Private Lopez who was standing in the firing position was thrown from the Lince and run over by the tanker.

This is first casualty suffered by the Spanish Army after returning approximately 300 troops to Iraq to assist military training in January 2015 and despite the fact that the death of the soldier, whose body is being returned to Valencia for burial has been described as accidental, Spain’s Defence Minister, Pedro Morenés immediately returned to Madrid from London where he was attending a UN organised meeting discussing peacekeeping missions.