March 16, 2004

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Four Americans killed in a shooting attack Monday in northern Iraq were Baptist missionaries on a humanitarian mission -- a water purification project for the troubled country, church officials and friends said.

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board identified three of the victims as Larry T. Elliott, 60, and Jean Dover Elliott, 58, of Cary, North Carolina; and Karen Denise Watson, 38, of Bakersfield, California.

The fourth victim, whose name was not immediately released, died of wounds hours after the attack.

One other missionary was wounded.

"They knew going into Iraq, they couldn't really share their Christian faith unless somebody asked them," said Larry Kingsley, a church deacon. "They were there in a humanitarian situation. They were people who just had a great heart for helping people out."

The Elliotts were scouting the best location for a water purification project, said Michelle DeVoss of Cary, whose First Baptist Church in the Raleigh suburb was home when the Elliotts returned from Honduras, where they had been missionaries since 1978.

Watson was a detention officer with the Kern County Sheriff's Department in Bakersfield before joining the Richmond, Virginia-based mission board in January 2003, said Bill Bangham, a spokesman for the group that coordinates missionary activities for the Southern Baptist Convention.

She arrived in Iraq earlier this month to help the Elliotts and others study how best to allocate the mission board's humanitarian efforts, Bangham said.

U.S. Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, a spokesman for American forces in the northern city of Mosul, said in an e-mail message the victims were traveling in one car on the eastern side of the city when they were attacked.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/03/15/iraq.missionaries.ap/index.html