IRAQ - Denmark Evacuates Iraqi Employees & Relatives.

Denmark has secretly airlifted about 200 Iraqi employees and their relatives out of Iraq to prevent them from being killed after 470 Danish ground troops withdraw in August. Interpreters and other employees of foreign forces are prime targets for Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite militias who accuse them of being collaborators with the Americans. The last of three secret Danish flights left on July 20 before dawn with 80 Iraqis on board.

In June Denmark's center-right government said it would offer visas to Iraqi employees who wanted to apply for asylum. The Danish Defence Ministry said: "Out of concern for the interpreters and their families' security as well as the security of the Danish base in Iraq, the Defence Ministry has chosen to inform the public after the interpreters and others had left Iraq".