2 Iraqi women killed by alleged convoy guards

Guards in a security convoy opened fire on a car at an intersection in central Baghdad on Tuesday, killing two Iraqi Christian women then speeding away, police said. The Iraqi government said preliminary reports indicated a Western security company was behind the shooting.\nAcross Iraq, violence claimed the lives of at least 44 people, including 19 who died in coordinated suicide car bombings in the north that targeted a local police chief and a Sunni sheik.\nNeither witnesses nor police could immediately say which organization was involved in the Baghdad shooting, but the four-vehicle convoys of armored SUVs are commonly employed by private security companies and the Iraqi Interior Ministry.\nGovernment spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the convoy did not appear to be one from Blackwater USA, which has denied any involvement.\nHe initially said “preliminary reports indicate that an American security company has opened fire on two women and they were killed,” but he later amended the claim to say the shooters were employees of a “Western” firm.\n“But I don’t think it’s Blackwater. There are many security companies working in Iraq and some of them are not even registered,” he told The Associated Press.\nThe womens’ deaths threatened to increase calls for limits on the private security firms, which have come under intense scrutiny since the Sept. 16 shooting deaths of as many as 17 Iraqi civilians allegedly by guards with Blackwater, the largest firm protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq. In that case, the American security company said its employees were acting in self-defense.\nThe State Department said the convoy was not protecting American diplomats, but an embassy spokeswoman said an American nongovernmental organization may have been involved.\n“There may be a contractual relationship with a U.S. NGO,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo said. “We’re working on clarifying that.”\nThe women were in a white Oldsmobile that drove into the Masbah intersection in the central Karradah district as the convoy of three white and one gray SUV were stopped about 100 yards away, according to a policeman who witnessed the shooting from a nearby checkpoint.\nThe men in the SUVs threw a smoke bomb, apparently to warn the car against proceeding, said Riyadh Majid, the policeman. The woman driving the car tried to stop, but was killed along with the passenger when two guards in the convoy opened fire, Majid said.\nThe pavement where the attack occurred was stained with blood and covered with shattered glass from the car windows.\nHe said the convoy then raced away and Iraqi police came to collect the bodies and tow the car with blood still splattered on the white door to the local police station.\nAnother policeman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said the guards were masked and wearing khaki uniforms. He said one of them left the vehicle and started to shoot at the car while another opened fire from the open back door of a separate SUV.\nThe victims were identified by relatives and police as Marou Awanis, born in 1959, and Geneva Jalal, born in 1977.\nAssociated Press writers Katarina Kratovac and Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this story.