Slapped Iraqi soldier shoots dead two US troops

Air Langhi · Nov 13, 2008

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24645000-601,00.html

Slapped Iraqi soldier shoots dead two US troops

AN Iraqi soldier on foot patrol with US forces in the northern city of Mosul shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded six more, the worst such case yet of US-trained local troops turning their guns on their allies.

The Iraqi soldier, identified as Barzan al-Hadidi, was part of a joint daytime patrol on the streets of the dangerous city, considered to be one of the last strongholds of Al-Qa'ida and its local allies in Iraq. He was quickly gunned down by other members of the patrol, officials said.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said the soldier opened fire after he had been publicly slapped by an American colleague. Many Iraqi men, especially in the military, are intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour.

“Two soldiers were killed and six wounded in a small-arms fire attack in an Iraqi Army compound in Mosul today. Initial reports indicate the attacker was an Iraqi soldier,” the US military said.

“The situation is fluid and still under investigation, so the casualty figures may change,” it added. A local morgue which received the Iraqi soldier’s body said it had been riddled with bullets.

There have been instances of Iraqi soldiers opening fire on their US mentors and comrades in the past, but never to such a deadly extent. Insurgents have also used Iraqi army uniforms to infiltrate joint bases in the past. One of the worst cases was in Mosul in 2004, when a suicide bomber dressed as an Iraqi soldier blew himself up in an American army mess hall, killing more than dozen US soldiers.

Today’s severe breach of discipline highlights the dangers of joint patrols with an Iraqi army still being shaped by the US military, and on to which Washington hopes to shift the burden of security as it draws down its forces in Iraq under the future presidency of Barack Obama.

Those security challenges have loomed larger in recent days, with a spate of bombings and shooting recalling the dark years that Iraqis had hoped were finally behind them.

Two dozen people were killed in attacks across the country yesterday, 12 of them in a combined car bombing and roadside booby trap in eastern Baghdad. In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the first explosion targeted a police patrol and the second concealed device cut down those who ran to the aid of the stricken security forces.

Sixty people were wounded in the twin blasts.

Earlier in the day, another four people were killed and 13 wounded by car bomb in the northern Baghdad area of Shaab, long one of the capitals’ more volatile areas. Another seven people were wounded in a separate explosion in the same part of town.

In the city centre, yet another car bomb killed four people, including two police officers on one of Baghdad’ busiest streets. A car bomb in the south of the city killed four more people, officials said.
In further violence in Mosul, two Christian sisters working for the local council were also murdered by gunmen who broke into their home and opened fire. The gunmen wounded the women’s mother before setting a booby trap made of five separate bombs in the family home. When police arrived at the scene of the killing, the devices detonated, wounding two officers.

The uptick in violence included the deployment of the youngest suicide bomber to date this week, a 13-year-old girl who was strapped with explosives and sent by terrorists to target a patrol of Sunni militiamen in the restive town of Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.
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At least that Indian guy did not pull an ak on that girl.

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Slapped Iraqi soldier shoots dead two US troops

Air Langhi Contributing Member

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