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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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October 9th,
2007 - Security Guards Fire on Iraqi Car |
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Security Guards Fire on
Iraqi Car Foreign private security guards escorting a convoy through central
Baghdad have killed two Iraqi women in a passing car, Iraqi sources say. From BBC News October 9, 2007 An Australian-run firm
confirmed one of its teams had opened fire after a car failed to heed
warnings to pull away, and said it regretted the deaths. One Iraqi policeman likened
the guards to "gangsters riding away". The conduct of Western
security firms in Iraq is already in question after a shooting in Baghdad
last month. ‘Warnings, then shots’ In a statement released to
the BBC News website, Unity Resources Group, which is run out of Dubai, said
it was aware of a shooting incident involving one of its security teams. "The first information
that we have is that our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle
which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand
signals and a signal flare," the statement said. "Finally shots were
fired at the vehicle and it stopped." Unity was, it added,
"working with the Iraqi authorities" to investigate the outcome of
the incident. In a later statement, the
company said its team had feared a suicide attack as that part of Baghdad,
Karrada, had "been subject to vehicle suicide bomber attacks in recent
weeks". Karada saw a spate of car
bomb attacks during the summer but is nonetheless considered one of Baghdad's
safer areas. Women and children According to eyewitnesses,
the masked security guards threw a smoke bomb and opened fire on a car which
was driving close to the four-vehicle convoy they were protecting. Two women in the car were
killed and a third was injured. One eyewitness, shopkeeper
Ammar Fallah, said the guards had signalled for the car's woman driver to
pull over as they passed. "When she failed to do
so they opened fire, killing her and the woman next to her," he told AFP
news agency. "There were two
children in the back seat but they were not harmed. The women were both shot
in the head." Relatives at a local police
station identified the dead women as Marou Awanis, 48, and Geneva Jalal, 30,
both members of Iraq's small Christian minority. Marou Awanis was a widowed
"part-time taxi-driver trying to make ends meet and to pay for the
education of her two children", relative Abu Mairam told AFP news
agency. Inquiry launched Iraqi government spokesman
Ali al-Dabbagh said an investigation was under way into the incident. A US embassy spokeswoman
quoted by Reuters news agency said the convoy had not been carrying its
staff. On Monday, the Iraqi
government demanded that the US security firm Blackwater pay $8m (£3.9m)
compensation to each family bereaved by last month's shootings in Baghdad,
which killed 17 people. Blackwater has the contract
for guarding US embassy staff and is also used both by visiting businesspeople
and officials. It insists its staff were
acting in legitimate self-defence, and that they had come under fire from
insurgents. Iraq's government is
demanding the US end its association with Blackwater and has vowed to put
such firms under Iraqi jurisdiction. External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7035924.stm |