W Post: Australian firm's guards kill 2 Iraqi Christian women
- From: google.2.zolpot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:03:51 -0700
washingtonpost.com
Guards Kill Two Women In Iraq
Australian-Run Firm's Convoy Fires on Vehicle
By Joshua Partlow and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 10, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Oct. 9 -- Private security guards from an Australian-run firm
opened fire on a white sedan in downtown Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon,
killing two Iraqi Christian women who were driving home from work.
The killings came at a time of unprecedented scrutiny into the
behavior of Western private security guards, seen by many Iraqis as
reckless mercenaries with little regard for Iraqi life. In an incident
last month involving Blackwater USA, guards killed as many as 17
people in what Iraqi and some U.S. officials have described as
unprovoked murder.
Tuesday's shooting involved Unity Resources Group, a Dubai-based
company founded by an Australian and registered in Singapore. The firm
was employed by RTI International, a nonprofit organization that does
governance work in Iraq on a contract for the U.S. Agency for
International Development, according to David Snider, a USAID
spokesman in Washington.
The two Iraqi women were shot as they came up behind a convoy of the
firm's sport-utility vehicles, and their deaths seemed certain to
heighten tensions between the Iraqi government and the thousands of
private security guards operating in Iraq.
"They used excessive force against civilians. Two ladies have been
killed," said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. "They are
facing a high level of threat, but this does not entitle them not to
be subjected to justice, law and accountability."
Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said Unity Resources was registered
with the ministry and reported the shooting afterward. "They have
admitted what they have done," said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the
chief Interior Ministry spokesman. "They have apologized and said they
will do whatever the Interior Ministry asks them to do."
Both the company and the Interior Ministry have launched
investigations into the incident.
The violence broke out in the early afternoon, when four SUVs
belonging to Unity were heading east along a six-lane divided
thoroughfare in Karrada, one of central Baghdad's most popular
shopping districts. The white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, carrying four
people -- including at least three women -- drove toward the convoy
from behind, witnesses said.
Iraqi police investigating the incident said the gunner in the last
vehicle threw open a door and tossed what looked like a flare, then
fired at least 19 rounds into the Oldsmobile.
According to Unity's chief operating officer, Michael Priddin, the
women drove up quickly and "failed to stop despite escalation of
warnings" including "hand signals and a signal flare."
"Finally shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped in close
vicinity to the security team," Priddin said in a telephone interview.
"We deeply regret the firing of shots."
Iraqi police and witnesses at the scene gave differing accounts. Some
said the Oldsmobile kept driving toward the convoy while others said
it had stopped a safe distance away. They agreed that the car posed no
threat to the security guards.
The gunfire sparked chaos on the crowded street as pedestrians ran for
cover. A horse pulling a cart, used for selling black-market cooking
gas, galloped away without its owner. Traffic policemen believed
insurgents were attacking.
"A vehicle got close to them, and they opened fire on it randomly as
if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim
Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain
is scattered on the ground."
He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what
happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so
natural for them to shoot innocent people?"
The Oldsmobile was shot first in the radiator as it passed a plumbing
supply shop, employees said. The shooting continued and the car came
to rest about 50 yards away, next to a yellow and white median curb
marked by broken glass and blood.
"Probably they were not paying attention and they weren't able to stop
right away," said one employee, who would not give his name.
The Oldsmobile, towed to a police station in Karrada, left little
doubt how the women died. There were holes from at least 35 bullets
that scarred the hood, punctured the windshield, popped tires and
shattered three windows. Rivulets of blood ran down the driver's door.
The shots killed the driver, Marony Ohanis, born in 1958, and the
front-seat passenger, Geneva Jalal Entranic, born in 1977, relatives
said. A woman and a young boy were in the back seat, witnesses said.
Police said the boy was shot in the arm. They were all friends who
knew one another from the Armenian Orthodox church in Baghdad,
relatives said. Christians are a small minority in Iraq.
After her husband died about two years ago from heart trouble, Ohanis,
a college graduate with an agriculture degree, made money to support
her three daughters by driving friends home from work, said Lida
Sarkis, her niece. One of her daughters, a college student in
engineering, sobbed as she walked around the broken car.
"She was very calm, she always prayed, she always went to church,"
Sarkis said. "They killed them. She was stopped. That's all."
In March 2006, a guard employed by Unity Resources Group allegedly
shot dead an Australian resident in Baghdad whose car failed to stop
at a security checkpoint. After an investigation, the case was
eventually settled with the Iraqi authorities, Priddin said.
The company has operated in Iraq since 2004 and mostly protects
premises and moving convoys, Priddin said. The firm operates in
Pakistan and southern Sudan as well as in Asia and Australia,
according to its Web site.
Also Tuesday, violence spiked across the country, with more than 45
people killed in bombings and shootings. In two of the deadliest
incidents, suicide car bombers attacked in quick succession in
northern Iraq, targeting a local police chief and a prominent Sunni
tribal leader who has been working with U.S. troops in the fight
against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi and U.S. military
officials said.
The two car bombs detonated in the morning in Baiji, an oil refinery
town, and killed at least seven people, including five Iraqi police
officers, and wounded 21 others, according to Lt. Col. Michael
Donnelly, a U.S. military spokesman in northern Iraq. Hospital
officials said the death toll reached 19, with more people in critical
condition.
One bomb blew up outside the home of the Baiji police chief, Col. Saad
al-Nifoos, while the second, a tanker loaded with explosives, targeted
Samir Ibrahim, the area leader of a movement known as the Awakening
Council, a tribal organization formed to fight extremists. Both men
survived. Another Sunni tribal leader allied with Americans in
Salahuddin province was killed in the past month, Donnelly said.
"We see this as yet another drastic measure" by al-Qaeda in Iraq
"trying to disrupt a process that's got some momentum," he said.
"They're actually being marginalized by the people, and strategically
this is a good sign."
The bombs destroyed and damaged homes, and rescue workers spent the
morning pulling bodies from the rubble.
Ahmad Mahmmoud, a member of the governing council in Baiji, vowed to
continue the fight to drive out al-Qaeda in Iraq, "whom I consider
vampires sucking the blood of poor Iraqis."
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and Zaid Sabah in Baghdad and
Muhanned Saif Aldin in Tikrit contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100900481.html
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