The initial U.S. Embassy report on a Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad involving Blackwater USA, a private security firm, depicts an afternoon of mayhem.
The two-page report, described by a State Department official as a “first blush” account from the scene, raises new questions about what transpired during a shootout in a traffic circle.
The report, by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security and obtained by The Washington Post, lays out the events as described by Blackwater guards.
According to their account, the incident began shortly after noon as three Blackwater teams moved to escort a State Department official back to Baghdad’s Green Zone. The official had been visiting a “financial compound” when a car bomb detonated about 25 yards outside the entrance, the report said.
Two of the Blackwater teams returned to the Green Zone with the official, who apparently was unharmed. But a third team came under fire from “8-10 persons” who “fired from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms,” the report said.
A State Department official, who declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigations into the shooting, said the report, which was dated the same day as the attack, reflected only what embassy officers were told by the Blackwater guards immediately after the incident. He said details could change as the investigations move forward.
The report, which is designated sensitive but unclassified, differs significantly from the account of the Iraqi Interior Ministry and several witnesses interviewed at the scene. According to those accounts, the Blackwater guards moved into the traffic circle in a convoy of armored vehicles, halting traffic and then firing on a white sedan that had failed to slow down as it entered the area. The car burst into flames, killing the driver, a woman, according to those accounts. The Blackwater team then unleashed a barrage of fire into the surrounding area as people tried to flee in the pandemonium.
Sarhan Thiab, a traffic policeman who was in the circle at the time, said Iraqi police did not fire on Blackwater. “Not a single bullet. They were the only ones shooting,” said Thiab, who said he and other traffic officers fled to nearby bushes once the shooting began.
