Four Blackwater USA Employees Killed In Ambush In Baghdad
By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press Writer
(AP) - Assailants ambushed a convoy of security contractors traveling to Baghdad's airport, killing two Americans and two Poles working for a U.S. security company in Iraq, their employer, Blackwater USA - based in Moyock, N.C. - said Sunday.
Gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons as the security guards working for Blackwater traveled to the airport to pick up a client, a company official in Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Four men died on the spot, but three others managed to fight their way to the other side of the road, flag down a passing car, and travel to safety with U.S. coalition forces at their headquarters in the Green Zone in central Baghdad.
Company spokesman Chris Bertelli, speaking by telephone from Washington D.C., said the convoy was "attacked from a couple of different angles by four or five vehicles with four or five people each."
"They at least had automatic weapons if not RPGs," or rocket-propelled grenades, Bertelli said.
Bertelli declined to identify the two Poles and two Americans killed in the attack. He said they and three other Blackwater guards who survived the attack were working for a delivery subcontractor for Texas-based KBR, a division of Halliburton Company. The subcontractor, called ESS, generally transports food and kitchen equipment within Iraq.
Though the major road is heavily traveled, it "seems to be one where ambushes are not unheard of in that area," Bertelli said.
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