Blackwater shootout left 17 dead
2 days ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Seventeen people were killed and 24 injured in the September 16 Baghdad shootout involving security teams from private firm Blackwater USA, it was reported.

That death toll is significantly higher than the 10 originally reported in the incident which prompted intense criticism of Blackwater's operations protecting American diplomats and other officials in Iraq, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
 

Citing witnesses, Iraqi investigators and a US official, the Times said the shootout in Baghdad's The Times also said that shortly after the first shootout, a Blackwater convoy opened fire at another spot a few hundred meters (yards) away near the square, an incident that had previously gone unreported. Nisour Square started when a Blackwater guard fired a single shot at a hospital pathologist driving his mother on an errand, killing him. When the man's car continued to roll ahead toward the Blackwater team, they let loose "an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions," killing the mother in the car and hitting numerous fleeing Iraqis, the newspaper said.

While the Times report suggested that the Blackwater team did not come under attack, as the company has claimed, it said it was not clear if Iraqi security forces themselves started firing once the incident began -- which could have led the Blackwater men to believe they were being attacked.

 

Iraqi investigators believe that some of the gunfire also came from Blackwater helicopters which arrived overhead after the shooting began, a point which the company has denied.

On Tuesday Blackwater chief executive Erik Prince denied to a US Congress hearing that his staff ran riot like "cowboys" after a Congressional report suggested the company's security teams in Iraq are out of control.

Prince, an ex-Navy SEAL who had previously shunned the limelight, warned lawmakers there had been a "rush to judgment" over the Nisour Square shooting.

"Based on everything we currently know, the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone on September 16," Prince said in prepared testimony.

"To the extent there was loss of innocent life, let me be clear that I consider that tragic," said Prince.

Prince appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee amid a public storm over the role of for-profit contract firms in war zones, and a string of probes into Blackwater's conduct.

The committee report found that Blackwater had been involved in at least 195 shootings in Iraq since 2005, and accused it of covering up fatal shootings involving its staff.

But Prince warned the firm was the victim of "negative and baseless allegations reported as truth."

He added that no one, including US lawmakers on visits to Iraq, had been killed while being protected by Blackwater guards, most US veterans, while 30 employees had died while on duty.

Blackwater has earned over one billion dollars for security services to the US government since 2001, and is contracted by the State Department to protect US diplomats in Iraq.

"The September 16 shooting ... is just the latest in a series of troubling Blackwater incidents," the Congressional committee chairman Henry Waxman said during Tuesday's hearing.

Representative Dennis Kucinich, a longshot Democratic presidential hopeful, said firms like Blackwater had no interest in promoting peace.

"If war is privatized, then private contractors have a vested interest in keeping the war going. The longer the war goes on, the more money they make."
 

An Iraqi investigation into the events stated that as the convoy drew close to Nissor Square, a distant Toyota with a woman and child in it was driving slowly on the wrong side of the road, and ignored a police officer's whistle to clear a path for the convoy. The report said the security team fired warning shots and then lethal fire at the Toyota. After this, the report said that stun grenades were fired off by contractors to clear the scene. The report continues by saying Iraqi police and Army soldiers, mistaking the stun grenades for explosions, opened fire at the Blackwater team, to which the Blackwater team again responded.[6][7] A Reuters report showed some of the vehicles which were left at the scene.[8] In one video from the incident, the boy in the Toyota is believed to have burned to the mother's body after the car set fire.[6] According to Iraqi investigators, a Blackwater helicopter present during the attack, fired several times from the air. Blackwater has denied these charges.[9][10]

Iraqi Brigadier-General Abdul-Karim Khalaf has stated the US firm 'opened fire randomly at citizens'. Among those killed was one Iraqi policeman; however, no State Department officials were wounded or killed.[11]

Blackwater has stated that a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) detonated close to the meeting point[12] and that their security team then evacuated the State Department officials. Blackwater says the convoy passed through Nissor Square, between the Sunni controlled al-Mansour and al-Yarmukh neighborhoods, and was attacked. According to Blackwater VP Marty Strong, it was hit with "a large explosive device" and "repeated small arms fire" which disabled a vehicle.[12] Several sources have stated that the explosion was caused by a mortar round, though this is not reflected in the Department of State incident report.[13][14] Blackwater has denied Iraqi allegations that one of their Helicopters fired from the air during the incident.[9][10]

A State Department report states that eight to ten attackers opened fire "from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms". The report says that as the convoy tried to leave, its route was blocked by insurgents armed with machine guns at 12:08pm. According to the report, "The team returned fire to several identified targets" before leaving the area and a second convoy en route to help was "blocked/surrounded by several Iraqi police and Iraqi national guard vehicles and armed personnel".[14] A US Army convoy, possibly the same one delayed by Iraqi forces, arrived approximately a half hour later, backed by air cover, to escort the convoy back to the Green Zone.[12]

On September 27, the New York Times reported that during the incident at Nissour Square, one member of the Blackwater security team continued to fire on civilians, despite urgent cease-fire calls from colleagues. The incident was resolved after another Blackwater contractor pointed his own weapon at the man still firing and ordered him to stop.[15]

US Military reports appear to corroborate the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault in the incident.[16]
 

The New York Times' reconstruction

MARGARET WARNER: Now, meanwhile, you and your bureau chief did your own reconstruction of the events as they unfolded that day. Tell us about it. What was the precipitating incident?

ALISSA RUBIN: The first thing that happened was that there was a bomb some ways from the event. But it caused a decision, it seems, for the people who were being guarded -- we're still not sure who they were, whether they were diplomats or other U.S. officials -- caused a decision to have them leave where they were and attempt to go back to the Green Zone or to the embassy.

And at that point, a Blackwater team came through, presumably to clear the road, as they usually do, and they came into this square, which has been written about a lot, Nisour Square. It's sort of in the Yarmuk-Mansour area of Baghdad. It's a very busy square usually. And they positioned four vehicles in the square.

And at that point, there was incoming traffic from many directions. And Blackwater's goal was to stop the traffic so that, if that convoy came through, they would be able to go through and not be hurt and go through quickly. But it seems that, when they tried to stop the traffic, something happened that set off a first volley of bullets from Blackwater.

We don't know if they were shot at. That's what -- they've said that they came under fire and responded appropriately. And that is not the report we've heard from Iraqis, but there's no way to reconcile the Blackwater version with the Iraqi versions.

In any case, at that point, so they fired a few bullets, and one of them hit and seems to have basically smashed the face of a man who was driving his mother in a car a little ways back from the square. And the police rushed over to try to help the man. The mother grabbed her son and began to cry -- she's a doctor -- and another policeman tried to go -- these are Iraqi police -- tried to help her.

And at that point, it seems there was the fear that the police might be pushing this car forward, maybe it was a car bomb, and then Blackwater guards began to fire an enormous barrage of bullets. And people were terrified. People were trying to back up their cars. They were trying to turn their cars. There was a mini-bus which had several people on it.

As the bullets began to hit, they tried to get off the bus and take shelter behind a small cement bus stop. A young boy was killed as his mother was running away, it seems. Perhaps he was killed on the bus; it's not entirely clear. It was a scene of mayhem and terror, really, as people tried to run away, as best we can tell from all the witnesses we've spoke to.

ne has only to read the New York Times coverage – which is, so far, the only coherent narrative – to get a very clear sense of the horror and tragedy of our involvement in Iraq.
The Incident

A road bomb went off in the vicinity of a "financial compound" where U.S. diplomatic personnel were present, and an immediate order went out to extract them. While one Blackwater convoy picked up the diplomats who were on their way to Nisour Square at the time of the incident, another convoy moved into the area and diverted traffic. Blackwater officials have previously asserted that their personnel opened fire only when they found themselves under attack, but that account is contradicted by every available witness. As the Times reports: "The events in the square began with a short burst of bullets that witnesses described as unprovoked. A traffic policeman standing at the edge of the square, Sarhan Thiab, saw that a young man in a car had been hit. In the line of traffic, that car was the third vehicle from the intersection where the convoy had positioned itself.

Why did the Blackwater guards fire on a car that was nowhere near their convoy until the weight of its dead driver on the accelerator drove it in their direction? No witness recalls shots being fired before the Americans unleashed their deadly fusillade. Yet the Blackguards and their spokesman claimed to have been under attack, possibly from Iraqi police. That's not how Iraqi witnesses tell it. Says Fareed Walid Hassan, a truck driver caught in the intersection:

"'The shooting started like rain; everyone escaped his car.' … He saw a woman dragging her child. ‘He was around 10 or 11,' he said. "He was dead. She was pulling him by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive.'"

Why were the Americans firing indiscriminately into cars at a busy Baghdad intersection? This is the question Rep. Waxman dared not ask at his phony "hearing," and which needs to be asked anyway. The answer, I fear, is because if you're an American in Iraq, every Iraqi is seen as an enemy. After all, a good proportion of the population wants us the heck out of there, and believes attacks on U.S. soldiers – or "private contractors" – are entirely justified. In such an atmosphere, who wouldn't be trigger-happy, not to mention paranoid and driven half-mad by the ever-looming prospect of imminent danger?

The issue is not private contractors, per se, although the rules of engagement followed by the Blackguards are considerably more relaxed than those in force for the U.S. military: U.S. soldiers have been involved in similar incidents, and a lot worse. The point is that we are an occupying force, and are seen as such by the increasingly resentful Iraqis: whether private or U.S. government-owned-and-operated, an army of occupation is going to meet resistance, and so we have. We are fast reaching a critical point – when growing resentment and even hatred of the Americans takes the shape of a demand for some accountability from the occupiers.

The official Iraqi investigation into the September 16 incident has been concluded, and submitted to the government: a three-man panel, headed up by the Iraqi defense minister, recommends the Blackguards stand trial in Iraq, under Iraqi law – an explosive demand that could lead to an open rupture between the Maliki government and Washington.

If ever Iyad Allawi had a chance to take advantage of an American-sponsored coup, surely that moment, if it isn't already upon us, cannot be far.

The rising political firestorm over the Blackwater massacre runs up against a legal firewall in the form of an edict issued by Paul Bremer, former U.S. viceroy, that forbids US military personnel (including private contractors) from being charged by Iraqi authorities or tried in Iraqi courts. It was one of his last acts, one that put the lie to the American proclamation of Iraqi "sovereignty."

The crisis will come when Iraqi demands for justice collide with the reality of Iraq's de facto status as a U.S. colony. In the event of a showdown over this case – and over the larger issue of sovereignty – the Americans will either go to war with the government they hailed as the vanguard of the region's democratic transformation, or else pack up their gear and go.

I'm betting on the former. In a war full of ironic twists and turns, this would be the crowning example of what Chalmers Johnson calls "blowback" – the unintended consequences of U.S. government intervention overseas that blow back in our faces. With one very important difference, however: it's hard to believe that growing tensions between Washington and the Shi'ite-dominated Maliki government, while unintended, were altogether unanticipated.

In their planned war with Iran, surely the best the neocons can hope for is a neutral – or effectively neutralized – Iraqi government. It doesn't take much imagination, however, to project the possibility of U.S. troops facing off against the Shi'ite party militias run by the parties of the ruling coalition.

How will our War Party explain this rather disturbing turn of events to their bewildered and war-weary constituency, which is, at any rate, shrinking fast? Easy. By that time, the image of a nuke-wielding terrorist-sponsoring Saddam Hussein will have long since morphed into a nuclear-armed, Hezbollah-sponsoring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, bound and determined to wipe Israel off the map.

 

OBy Leila Fadel, McClatchy Newspapers
Sat Sep 29, 3:06 PM ET



BAGHDAD — On Sept. 9 , the day before Army Gen. David Petraeus , the U.S. military commander in Iraq , and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Congress that things were getting better, Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein came to Baghdad on business for the day.

A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al Khilani Square, not far from the fortified Green Zone, where top U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work. U.S. officials often pass through the square in heavily guarded convoys on their way to other parts of Baghdad .

As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.

Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she'd held in her arms fluttered down the street.

Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence that Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq .

During the ensuing week, as Crocker and Petraeus told Congress that the surge of more U.S. troops to Iraq was beginning to work and President Bush gave a televised address in which he said "ordinary life was beginning to return" to Baghdad , Blackwater security guards shot at least 43 people on crowded Baghdad streets. At least 16 of those people died.

Two Blackwater guards died in one of the incidents, which was triggered when a roadside bomb struck a Blackwater vehicle.

Still, it was an astounding amount of violence attributed to Blackwater. In the same eight-day period, according to statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers , other acts of violence across the embattled capital claimed the lives of 32 people and left 87 injured, not including unidentified bodies found dumped on Baghdad's streets.

The best known of that week's incidents took place the following Sunday, Sept. 16 , when Blackwater guards killed 11 and wounded 12 at the busy al Nisour traffic circle in central Baghdad .

Iraqi officials said the guards were unprovoked when they opened fire on a white car carrying three people, including a baby. All died. The security guards then fired at other nearby vehicles, including a minibus loaded with passengers, killing a mother of eight. An Iraqi soldier also died.

In Blackwater's only statement regarding the Sept. 16 incident, Anne Tyrell , the company's spokeswoman, denied that the dead were civilians. "The 'civilians' reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies," she said in an e-mail, "and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire."

A joint commission of five U.S. State Department officials, three U.S. military officials and eight Iraqis has been formed to investigate the incident, though almost two weeks later, the commission has yet to meet. A U.S. Embassy statement on Thursday, the first official written comment from the embassy since the al Nisour shooting, said that the group was "preparing" to meet.

Blackwater and the U.S. Embassy didn't respond to requests for information about the other incidents.

But interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors of each incident describe similar circumstances in which Blackwater guards took aggressive action against civilians who seemed to pose no threat.

"They killed her in cold blood," Hussein Jumaa Hassan , 30, a parking lot attendant, said of Hussein.

Hassan pointed to the bullet-pocked concrete column behind him. He'd hidden behind it.

"I was boiling with anger, and I wished that I had a weapon in my hands in those minutes," he said. "They wanted to kill us all."

Anyone who moved was shot until the convoy left the square, witnesses said. Also among the dead was Kadhim Gayes , a city hall guard.

It took two days for Hussein's family to retrieve her body from the morgue. Before they could, her sister signed a sheet acknowledging the contents of her purse, which had been collected by security guards at the Baghdad city hall— a Samsung cell phone, a change purse with six keys and 37,000 Iraqi dinars ($30) , gold bracelets, a notebook, pens, and photos of her and her children.

Three days later, Blackwater guards were back in al Khilani Square, Iraqi government officials said. This time, there was no shooting, witnesses said. Instead, the Blackwater guards hurled frozen bottles of water into store windows and windshields, breaking the glass.

Ibrahim Rubaie , the deputy security director at a nearby Baghdad city government office building, said it's common for Blackwater guards to shoot as they drive through the square. He said Blackwater guards also shot and wounded people in the square on June 21 , though there are no official reports of such an incident.

On Sept. 13 — the same day Bush gave his "ordinary life" speech— Blackwater guards were escorting State Department officials down Palestine Street near the Shiite enclave of Sadr City when a roadside bomb detonated, ripping through one of the Blackwater vehicles.

The blast killed two Blackwater guards. As other guards went to retrieve the dead, they fired wildly in several directions, witnesses said.

Mohammed Mazin was at home when he heard the bang, which shattered one of his windows.

Then he heard gunfire, and he and his son, Laith, went to the roof to see what was going on.

What they saw were security contractors shooting in different directions as a helicopter hovered overhead. Bullets flew through his home's windows, he said.

No civilians were killed that day, but five were wounded, according to Iraq's Interior Ministry .

The following Sunday, Blackwater guards opened fire as the State Department convoy they were escorting crossed in front of stopped traffic at the al Nisour traffic circle.

While U.S. officials have offered no explanation of what occurred that day, witnesses and Iraqi investigators agree that the guards' first target was a white car that either hadn't quite stopped or was trying to nudge its way to the front of traffic.

In the car were a man whose name is uncertain; Mahasin Muhsin , a mother and doctor; and Muhsin's young son. The guards first shot the man, who was driving. As Muhsin screamed, a Blackwater guard shot her. The car exploded, and Muhsin and the child burned, witnesses said.

Afrah Sattar , 27, was on a bus approaching the square when she saw the guards fire on the white car. She and her mother, Ghania Hussein , were headed to the Certificate of Identification Office in Baghdad to pick up proof of Sattar's Iraqi citizenship for an upcoming trip to a religious shrine in Iran .

When she saw the gunmen turn toward the bus, Sattar looked at her mother in fear. "They're going to shoot at us, Mama," she said. Her mother hugged her close. Moments later, a bullet pierced her mother's skull and another struck her shoulder, Sattar recalled.

As her mother's body went limp, blood dripped onto Sattar's head, still cradled in her mother's arms.

"Mother, mother," she called out. No answer. She hugged her mother's body and kissed her lips and began to pray, "We belong to God and we return to God." The bus emptied, and Sattar sat alone at the back, with her mother's bleeding body.

"I'm lost now, I'm lost," she said days later in her simple two-bedroom home. Ten people lived there; now there are nine.

"They are killers," she said of the Blackwater guards. "I swear to God, not one bullet was shot at them. Why did they shoot us? My mother didn't carry a weapon."

Downstairs, her father, Sattar Ghafil Slom al Kaabi, 67, sat beneath a smiling picture of his wife and recalled their 40-year love story and how they raised eight children together. On the way to the holy city of Najaf to bury her, he'd stopped his car, with her coffin strapped to the top. He got out and stood beside the coffin. He wanted to be with her a little longer.

"I loved her more than anything," he said, his voice wavering. "Now that she is dead, I love her more."

 

It's being described as "Baghdad's bloody Sunday." On September 16 a heavily armed State Department convoy guarded by Blackwater USA was whizzing down the wrong side of the road near Nisour Square in the congested Mansour neighborhood in the Iraqi capital. Iraqi police scrambled to block off traffic to allow the convoy to pass. In the chaos, an Iraqi vehicle entered the square, reportedly failing to heed a policeman's warning fast enough. The Blackwater operatives, protecting their American principal, a senior State Department official, opened fire on the vehicle, killing the driver. According to witnesses, Blackwater troops then launched some sort of grenade at the car, setting it ablaze. But inside the vehicle was not a small sect from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or the Mahdi Army, the "armed insurgents" Blackwater described killing in its official statement on the incident. It was a young Iraqi family--man, woman and infant--whose crime appeared to be panicking in a chaotic traffic situation. Witnesses say the bodies of the mother and child were melded together by the flames that had engulfed their vehicle.

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Gunfire rang out in Nisour Square as people fled for their lives. Witnesses described a horrifying scene of indiscriminate shooting by the Blackwater guards. In all, as many as twenty-eight Iraqis may have been killed, and doctors say the toll could climb, as some victims remain in critical condition. A company spokesperson said Blackwater's forces "acted lawfully and appropriately" and "heroically defended American lives in a war zone." Blackwater's version of events is hotly disputed, not only by the Iraqi government, which says it has video to prove the shooting was unprovoked, but also by survivors of the attack. "I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Iraqi lawyer Hassan Jabar Salman, who was shot four times in the back during the incident. "But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus--he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him. She jumped out after him, and she was killed."

Salman says he was driving behind the Blackwater convoy when it stopped. Witnesses say some sort of explosion had gone off in the distance, too far away to have been perceived as a threat. He said Blackwater guards ordered him to turn his vehicle around and leave the scene. Shortly after, the shooting began. "Why had they opened fire?" he asked. "I do not know. No one--I repeat no one--had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back, and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot." In all, he says, his car was hit twelve times, including the four bullets that pierced his back.

While the shooting in Nisour Square has put the issue of private forces in Iraq--and Blackwater's name specifically--on the front pages of newspapers around the globe, this is hardly the first deadly incident involving these forces. What is new is that the Iraqi government responded powerfully. Within twenty-four hours of the shooting, Iraq's Interior Ministry announced that it was expelling Blackwater from the country; Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the firm's conduct "criminal."

The next day, the State Department ordered all non-US military officials to remain inside the Green Zone, and diplomatic convoys were halted. The Iraqi government, acting as though it was in control of the country, announced that it intended to prosecute the Blackwater men responsible for the killings. "We will not allow Iraqis to be killed in cold blood," Maliki said. "There is a sense of tension and anger among all Iraqis, including the government, over this crime."

But getting rid of Blackwater would not prove to be so easy. Four days after being grounded, Blackwater was back on Iraqi streets. After all, Blackwater is not just any security company in Iraq; it is the leading mercenary company of the US occupation. It first took on this role in the summer of 2003, after receiving a $27 million no-bid contract to provide security for Ambassador Paul Bremer, the original head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Since then, it has kept every subsequent US Ambassador, from John Negroponte to Ryan Crocker, alive. It protects Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits the country, as well as Congressional delegations. Since its original Iraq contract, Blackwater has won more than $700 million in "diplomatic security" contracts through the State Department alone.

The company's domestic political clout has been key to its success. It is owned by Erik Prince, a reclusive right-wing evangelical Christian who has served as a major bankroller of the campaigns of George W. Bush and his allies. Among the company's senior executives are former CIA official J. Cofer Black, who once oversaw the extraordinary-rendition program and led the post-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden (and who currently serves as GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's top counterterrorism adviser), and Joseph Schmitz, the Pentagon Inspector General under Donald Rumsfeld.

So embedded is Blackwater in the US apparatus in Iraq that the incident in Nisour Square has sparked a crisis for the occupation that is both practical and political. Now that Blackwater's name is known (and hated) throughout Iraq, the bodyguards themselves are likely to become targets of resistance attacks, perhaps even more so than the officials they are tasked with keeping alive. This will make their work much more difficult. But beyond such security issues are more substantive political ones, as Blackwater's continued presence on Iraqi streets days after Maliki called for its expulsion serves as a potent symbol of the utter lack of Iraqi sovereignty.

Maliki has been under heavy US pressure to back off his initial demands. While Rice immediately called the Iraqi prime minister ostensibly to apologize, she made a point of emphasizing publicly that "we need protection for our diplomats." A few days later, Tahseen Sheikhly, a representative of Maliki's government, stated, "If we drive out this company immediately, there will be a security vacuum. That would cause a big imbalance in the security situation." Given the carnage of September 16, it was a difficult statement to wrap one's head around.

Maliki then agreed to withhold judgment on Blackwater's status, pending the conclusion of a joint US-Iraqi investigation. If he ultimately goes along with the United States and tolerates Blackwater's presence, the political consequences will be severe. Among those calling for the firm's expulsion is Muqtada al-Sadr. A cave-in by Maliki could weaken his already tenuous grip on power and reinforce the widespread perception that he is merely a puppet of the US occupation. Clearly aware of this, while visiting the United States a week after the shootings, Maliki went so far as to call the situation "a serious challenge to the sovereignty of Iraq" that "cannot be accepted."

In Baghdad there is great determination to bring the perpetrators of the Nisour Square slaughter to justice. An investigative team made up of officials from Iraq's Interior, National Security and Defense ministries said in a preliminary report that "the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation." But Iraqi investigators claim that they have received little or no information from the US government and have been denied access to the Blackwater operatives involved in the shootings. A US official appeared to dismiss the validity of the Iraqi investigation, telling the New York Times, "There is only the joint investigation that we have with the Iraqis."

Still, Iraqi officials announced their intent to bring criminal charges against the Blackwater forces involved in the shooting, and the report stated, "The criminals will be referred to the Iraqi court system." Abdul Sattar Ghafour Bairaqdar, a member of Iraq's Supreme Judiciary Council, the country's highest court, recently said, "This company is subject to Iraqi law, and the crime committed was on Iraqi territory, and the Iraqi judiciary is responsible for tackling the case."

The following Sunday, Blackwater guards opened fire as the State Department convoy they were escorting crossed in front of stopped traffic at the al Nisour traffic circle.

While U.S. officials have offered no explanation of what occurred that day, witnesses and Iraqi investigators agree that the guards' first target was a white car that either hadn't quite stopped or was trying to nudge its way to the front of traffic.

In the car were a man whose name is uncertain; Mahasin Muhsin , a mother and doctor; and Muhsin's young son. The guards first shot the man, who was driving. As Muhsin screamed, a Blackwater guard shot her. The car exploded, and Muhsin and the child burned, witnesses said.

Afrah Sattar , 27, was on a bus approaching the square when she saw the guards fire on the white car. She and her mother, Ghania Hussein , were headed to the Certificate of Identification Office in Baghdad to pick up proof of Sattar's Iraqi citizenship for an upcoming trip to a religious shrine in Iran .

When she saw the gunmen turn toward the bus, Sattar looked at her mother in fear. "They're going to shoot at us, Mama," she said. Her mother hugged her close. Moments later, a bullet pierced her mother's skull and another struck her shoulder, Sattar recalled.

As her mother's body went limp, blood dripped onto Sattar's head, still cradled in her mother's arms.

"Mother, mother," she called out. No answer. She hugged her mother's body and kissed her lips and began to pray, "We belong to God and we return to God." The bus emptied, and Sattar sat alone at the back, with her mother's bleeding body.

"I'm lost now, I'm lost," she said days later in her simple two-bedroom home. Ten people lived there; now there are nine.

"They are killers," she said of the Blackwater guards. "I swear to God, not one bullet was shot at them. Why did they shoot us? My mother didn't carry a weapon."

Downstairs, her father, Sattar Ghafil Slom al Kaabi, 67, sat beneath a smiling picture of his wife and recalled their 40-year love story and how they raised eight children together. On the way to the holy city of Najaf to bury her, he'd stopped his car, with her coffin strapped to the top. He got out and stood beside the coffin. He wanted to be with her a little longer.

"I loved her more than anything," he said, his voice wavering. "Now that she is dead, I love her more."