BAGHDAD, Iraq – Four U.S. contractors were killed last month when their convoy took a wrong turn, drove into a town north of Baghdad and was attacked by an angry mob, a senior U.S. military official said Saturday.
The incident, which occurred Sept. 20 in the town of Duluiyah, about 45 miles north of Baghdad, was first reported Saturday by Britain’s Daily Telegraph. The senior U.S. military commander confirmed the account.
The commander said the four men – identified by the Telegraph as employees of the Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown &Root – realized they had taken a wrong turn and were desperately trying to escape from the town when their vehicle was attacked by insurgents.
The Telegraph said “dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents wielding rocket launchers and automatic rifles” pursued the truck and shot at it.
Two contractors who were not killed in the initial firing were dragged from their vehicle, and one was shot in the back of the head, the newspaper said. The crowd “doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man’s body to stoke the flames,” according to the report.
The crowd then “dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-U.S. slogans,” the newspaper reported.
“Soldiers responded to assist the convoy, administered first aid to two wounded contractors and evacuated the remains of four wounded contractors killed in the attack,” a military spokesman told Reuters news service in a statement Saturday.
The incident recalled a similar one in March 2004, when a mob in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah killed four U.S. security contractors, mutilated their bodies and hanged them from a bridge.
In fighting Saturday, U.S.-led forces reported killing 20 “terrorists suspected of sheltering al Qaida in Iraq foreign fighters” in a series of raids on safe houses near Husaybah, a border town with Syria along the Euphrates River, a military statement said.
Another statement said that U.S.-led forces found a huge weapons cache in Rawah, a town about 45 miles from the border along the Euphrates, in search operations last week. Military officials say that the Euphrates river is a major transit route for foreign fighters and supplies that are fueling the insurgency here.
Electoral officials in Baghdad said Saturday that an audit of votes from the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum had so far uncovered no evidence of fraud. The audit was initiated because of the unusually high number of votes in favor of the Constitution in some areas of the country. Officials said full preliminary results were expected to be released within a few days.
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