The Iraqi government chastised diplomats for travelling without protection.

Gunmen opened fire on a convoy carrying Pakistan's envoy to Iraq yesterday in the third attack on a senior diplomat in three days, police sources said.

The sources said two cars of gunmen fired at the convoy in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad but sped off after guards returned fire. Nobody was reported hurt, they said.

Pakistan is to withdraw its ambassador from violence-plagued Iraq after the envoy said he had a "very narrow escape" from an attack on his convoy in Baghdad yesterday.

Envoy Younis Khan will be shifted to the Jordanian capital Amman following the assassination attempt, the third attack in four days on a foreign diplomat in Iraq's main city, Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

Iraq's interior ministry said the attack happened at an intersection in the upmarket Mansur district, not far from where Bahrain's envoy was wounded just hours earlier in an apparent kidnap attempt.

"I am safe but it was a very narrow escape," Khan told AFP by telephone from Baghdad.

As US President George W. Bush hailed the sacrifices made in rebuilding Iraq, violence continued to rage, with four women gunned down on their way to work at Baghdad airport.

Witnesses said Anasri was ambushed by at least eight gunmen after leaving his residence.

"Two men got out of their cars and screamed at him 'get out of your car' and at me 'get back inside'," a butcher shop owner said.

Instead, the diplomat kept going, and two of the men shot at him with an assault rifle and pistol, he said.

Ansari's car slowed down, but when the men ran after him he accelerated and managed to get away.

Two hundred meters further on, Ansari stopped in a street called 14 Nissan near a policeman and cried out: "I am a diplomat, help me!"

The policeman named Adel said "he was bleeding a lot. His suit, case and car were covered with blood. A short time later, a police patrol passed by and took him to the hospital."

No group has yet claimed responsibility for abducting Egypt's Sharif, who was set to become the first ambassador from an Arab nation to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Sharif was also the first head of mission to be abducted since Iraq's hostage crisis began.

The Iraqi government's spokesman expressed surprise Sharif was travelling on Baghdad's perilous roads without much protection and said that his security may have been compromised by contacts he may have had with political groups with ties to insurgents.

"The only advice we give is that if a diplomat from this mission or another wants to contact political groups that may be close to armed groups then the least he can do is tell the government which can bear some responsibility," Leith Kubba told reporters.

"We do not know the circumstances (surrounding Sharif's kidnapping) but this is one of the possibilities."

Kubba said the targeting of foreign diplomats is part of a calculated effort by insurgents to discourage countries from dealing with the Iraqi government.