Iraq shooting fuels anger

Iraqi officials took a hard line Tuesday on alleged abuses by foreign security contractors, saying criminal charges would be filed in the nonfatal shooting of a woman Monday as a guarded convoy carrying laborers passed by.

“We will no longer be easy on this,” said Qassim Atta, spokesman for Iraqi security forces in the capital.

A video of the incident that circulated in Baghdad on Tuesday dramatized the anger many Iraqis harbor against private security contractors. Critics charge that private guards often travel through the city at excessive speeds and at times fire indiscriminately at vehicles that might not pose a threat to their convoys.

The jerky video image, apparently taken from the bed of a truck that was transporting workers, shows a swarm of angry bystanders being kept at bay by warning shots from Iraqi soldiers who had arrived on the scene. About a dozen people lay in the truck bed cowering under blankets and suitcases as three soldiers stood over them. One soldier struck at several of the laborers with a stick as voices in the crowd urged him on.

Iraqi forces arrested 43 people who had been traveling in the convoy, including laborers and security personnel. The detainees were two Fijians, 10 Iraqis, 21 Sri Lankans, one Indian and nine Nepalese, the U.S. military said Monday.

Despite the fact that most of the 43 people who were detained in the shooting were reportedly unarmed, Atta said none would be released until the investigation was complete.

Atta did not clarify whether the detainees were being held as suspects or witnesses. However, he said those responsible for the shooting would be turned over to Iraqi courts for prosecution and that the others would be released. He could not say when that would occur.

“We are now interrogating the members of the company to find out who did the shooting, and we will hand him to the judicial courts,” Atta said.

The charges would be driving on the wrong side of the street, shooting randomly at civilians and injuring one, Atta said.

The U.S. military said it was working with Iraqi forces to provide support, but was not involved in the investigation.

“It is up to the government of Iraq to determine what charges, if any, will be filed,” the military said in a statement.

Attempts to prosecute could prove problematic because Iraqi law grants immunity to foreign contractors under an order issued by U.S. officials in 2004.

After a September shooting that involved guards from Blackwater USA, the company that provides security to U.S. Embassy officials, and that left at least 17 Iraqis dead, the Cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki last month proposed a law that would repeal contractors’ immunity. The Iraqi parliament has not yet acted on the measure.

The employer of the workers involved in Monday’s shooting, Almco, is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and has contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense to provide some bases with essentials such as food, water and tents, the U.S. military said. It also has a contract to build a courthouse as part of U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

Almco had contracted with an Iraqi company, Al Iraq Al Moaser, to provide security for the convoy, said a U.S. military spokesman.

It was unclear whether the workers were being escorted to a site related to a U.S. Defense contract or another of Almco’s clients in Iraq.

In other developments Tuesday:

* The military reported that two U.S. soldiers were killed and 12 injured when a helicopter crashed near Salman Pak, about 20 miles southeast of Baghdad. Initial reports indicated that the crash was not the result of enemy fire, a statement said. The deaths brought to 3,875 the number of U.S. service members killed in the Iraq theater, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

* The U.S. military reported killing 17 suspected insurgents and detaining 16 in operations in central and northern Iraq.

* A car bomb in the Bayaa neighborhood of southwest Baghdad killed one person and injured six. In the west Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, armed men opened fire, killing two computer engineers at a mosque, a source at Yarmouk Hospital said.

* Mousa Jaafar, the director-general of geologic surveying, was killed by gunmen while driving in central Baghdad, police said. One of his bodyguards was killed and another wounded.

* Six unidentified homicide victims were found in the capital.

* A roadside bomb exploded in a village southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk, killing one Iraqi soldier and injuring five others, police said.

* Two new mass graves were discovered. Police in the south Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiya found about 20 bodies in an abandoned house. On the road from Najaf to Karbala in the south, a melon grower dug up remains thought to date from the regime of Saddam Hussein.

doug.smith@latimes.com

Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Saif Hameed, Usama Redha and Raheem Salman and special correspondents in Baghdad and Kirkuk contributed to this report.