BAGHDAD — Three black GMC Suburbans — each fitted with armored plates and bulletproof windows — made up the heart of the convoy. The front and rear were protected by Blackwater USA gun trucks, known as Mambas, each mounted with two belt-fed 7.62 caliber heavy guns.
The vehicles snaked through the checkpoints and blast walls of the Green Zone, carrying Kerry Pelzman — a USAID specialist on helping rebuild Iraqi businesses, schools and other infrastructure — to a planning meeting about two miles from the Green Zone.
About noon, a car bomb exploded about 200 yards away from the meeting. Blackwater guards hustled Pelzman back into the vehicles, worried the bomb was the beginning of a larger attack. The convoy raced back toward the Green Zone.
Attempts by investigators to piece together what happened over the next hour have been like gathering the remnants of broken glass, spent bullet casings and blood-soaked clothes that were scattered around Nisoor Square. Each bit represents a part of the story — a version, a perspective — but the pieces have not yet yielded a full and mutually agreed rendering of what caused Blackwater guards to open fire.
Iraq responds to incident
An Iraqi government report comes down hard on Blackwater, demanding it leave Iraq within six months and blaming it for killing 17 civilians on Sept. 16. Authorities also want Blackwater to pay $8 million in compensation to families of each victim. The demands also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the shootings to face possible trial.
The Iraq report — as well as witness accounts and statements from Iraqi officials — put forward new details on the deadly chain of events.
Blackwater has said in the United States that its convoy in Nisoor Square opened fire only after coming under attack. No Iraqi witness has been found to corroborate that claim.
As Pelzman’s convoy was preparing to move toward the Nisoor Square traffic circle — just on the edge of the Green Zone — her Blackwater detail radioed for backup, fearing the explosion might be a diversion for a kidnapping operation.
About 12:15 p.m., four additional Mambas arrived at the traffic circle. Their plan was to watch over the traffic choke-point until the convoy passed.
What should have been a relatively routine mission went terribly wrong.
Tales of horror
One the Blackwater gunners — in the last Mamba that arrived in Nisoor Square — opened fire on an approaching white car driven by Ahmed Haithem Ahmed, a 20-year-old third-year medical student.
He was shot through the forehead and apparently died instantly. The car — with the automatic transmission still in gear — continued moving slowly forward. His mother, Mahasin Khazim, was in the passenger seat and reached over to cradle her son’s body.
“At first, there were five shots and after that I heard a woman screaming, ‘My son, my son. Help,’” said Sarhan Thiab, a traffic police officer on duty in the square.
“I ran with another policeman toward the car and we tried to pull the woman out. She was holding her son. His head was blown apart. We tried to stop the car which was still moving slowly because the son’s foot was on the accelerator.”
Thiab said the Blackwater guards started firing at the car again.
“I tried to use hand signals to make the Blackwater people understand that the car was moving on its own and we were trying to stop it. We were trying to get the woman out but had to run for cover,” Thiab said.
Continued heavy shooting set the car on fire, burning the corpses of the mother and son.
Mohammed Hafiz, a 37-year-old who owns a car parts business, lost his 10-year old child, Ali Mohammed. They were in the car immediately behind the white car. He wept heavily as he told the story.
“We were six persons in the car — me, my son, my sister and her three sons. The four children were in the back seat. My car was hit by about 30 bullets, everything was damaged, the engine, the windshield the back windshield and the tires.
“When the shooting started, I told everybody to get their heads down. I could hear the children screaming in fear.”
He said children in his neighborhood, unaware Ali had been killed, still show up at his house asking if Ali can come outside to play.
“I understand that it is God’s will. But such people should not be allowed to work in Iraq,” he said of Blackwater.
Shooting wouldn’t stop
Hafiz said he was interviewed by three U.S. military officers Sept. 26 at the Iraqi National Police headquarters about 500 yards from Nisoor Square. He said he heard other witnesses telling the U.S. officers they had seen a Blackwater guard trying to stop the shooting. The witnesses said the guard even pulled his gun on the other shooters, who ignored the threat and continued firing.
Once shooting stopped in the square, the Blackwater guards moved the four gun trucks clockwise around the traffic circle — against the traffic flow — and headed north toward where the Pelzman convoy may have been rushing back to the Green Zone by a less direct and longer route.
“Even as they were withdrawing, they were shooting randomly to clear the traffic,” said Ahmed Abdul-Timan, a 20-year-old who was standing in the middle of the traffic circle throughout the shooting. He works for the Baghdad city government as a guard at the traffic tunnel that runs under the square.
In addition, he said two helicopters were overhead and shooting into the melee in the square below. The government report reached a similar conclusion.
“They began shooting at the people. One man was shot in his shoulder from above. … It wasn’t heavy fire,” Ahmed Abdul-Timan said.
Two other witnesses, both traffic police officers, also said they saw helicopters over the square.
The government report said a second Blackwater convoy — apparently not Pelzman’s — tried to move through the square shortly after the shooting.
Iraqi police used water trucks to block the convoy from entering the square. It moved into an intense standoff — weapons pointed by both sides — between the Blackwater personnel in the vehicles and Iraqi police.
The faceoff was defused when two U.S. military Humvees emerged from the nearby National Police Headquarters and persuaded the Blackwater drivers and guards to turn around and return to the Green Zone.
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