(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-06 21:10

WARSAW, Poland - Poland's ambassador to Iraq was being kept in an artificial coma after suffering severe burns in an apparent assassination attempt earlier this week in downtown Baghdad, a doctor said Saturday.

The ambassador, Gen. Edward Pietrzyk, was wounded when his three-car convoy was ambushed with roadside bombs while traveling Wednesday through downtown Baghdad. A Polish security guard and two others were killed.

Officials had initially said that Pietrzyk only suffered minor injuries, but a doctor treating him in Poland, where he was brought for treatment, described his condition as serious but stable.

"The patient's life is not in direct danger, though his condition is still considered serious, primarily due to burns to his air passage," said Andrzej Krajewski, a doctor in the hospital in the northwestern Polish city of Gryfice, where Pietrzyk is being treated.

Pietrzyk suffered burns to about 20 percent of his body, and was being kept in an artificial coma as he heals to spare him pain, Krajewski said during a news conference, which was broadcast on TVN24.

Also Saturday, Poland's President Lech Kaczynski attended the funeral for the security guard killed during the attack, Bartosz Orzechowski.

Poland's Foreign Ministry this week condemned the attack on Pietrzyk's convoy as a "terrorist act," while German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called it "an attack on Europe and its values."