WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD, 10 December 2005 — The US military has launched a formal criminal investigation into a video that appears to show contractors firing on civilian vehicles in traffic in Iraq, a military spokesman said in Washington yesterday.
The video, which has been circulating on the Internet, shows a compilation of video clips taken from the rear window of a vehicle showing other cars on the road apparently coming under fire from it.
No faces appear in the video and only a few words are heard on the soundtrack that was dubbed over with an Elvis Presley song, “Mystery Train.” But at one point the silhouette of a barrel of an automatic weapon is visible inside the vehicle, followed by what appears to be a burst of fire.
In another clip, the impact of rounds can be seen hitting a vehicle on an open road. The vehicle then can be seen coming to a slow stop.
The video clips first appeared on a blog site called “Aegis PSD” operated by a former employee of Aegis Defense Services LTD, a British firm with a $293 million contract to provide the US government with security services in Iraq.
“There is an investigation under way by the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division in Iraq,” said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the Multinational Force-Iraq in Baghdad.
Aegis Defense Services Ltd said it had no connection to the website where the video appeared but it was maintained by a former member of an Aegis security escort team.
It said it has established a formal board of enquiry with US military authorities to investigate “whether the footage has any connection with the company and, should this prove to be the case, under what circumstances any incident took place.”
In Baghdad, 12 Iraqis were killed in outbreaks of violence yesterday, including an activist from a Sunni faction that is contesting next week’s watershed general election, security and medical sources said.
Two civilians were killed in clashes between unknown gunmen and Iraqi security forces in the Jamiaa neighborhood of western Baghdad.
A police commando was killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb detonated next to an Iraqi patrol in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dura.
Another bomb killed another policeman and a civilian elsewhere in southern Baghdad. Gunmen, dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms, raided a house in the town of Al-Imam south of the capital, killing a father and a son.
Further south, two Iraqis driving in a car were shot and killed by unknown assailants while a soldier was found dead and seven others wounded in the area around the flash point town of Balad.
Near Balad, the body of a member of the Islamic Party was found shot dead. In Bohruz, north of Baghdad, two brothers were shot dead by gunmen in their fabric shop.
Meanwhile campaigning for Iraq’s upcoming parliamentary elections is in full swing. The general secretary of the opposition Communist Party, Hamid Majid Mussa, attacked the interim government on television yesterday accusing it of corruption.
