Pat Dollard | Young Americans

AP’S Original Report, saying Americans were arrested. No news source has identified which security company was involved:

BAGHDAD (AP)—Iraqi soldiers detained two American security guards along with several other foreigners traveling in a private security convoy after they opened fire Monday in Baghdad, wounding one woman, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

AP’S Updated Report:

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraqi troops detained 43 people, most Sri Lankans and other foreigners, traveling in a convoy run by a U.S.-contracted firm after an Iraqi woman was wounded in a shooting involving their vehicles in Baghdad, the military said. It denied reports that two Americans were among those arrested.

The incident follows a series of recent shootings in which foreign security guards have allegedly killed Iraqis. Last month, the Iraqi Cabinet sent parliament a bill to lift immunity for foreign private security companies that has been in effect since the U.S. occupation began in 2003.

The convoy belonged to Almco, an international company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which has contracts with U.S.-led forces to provide food, water and other life support functions to military transition teams, as well as the construction of a justice compound, Maj. Brad Leighton said.

But the military spokesman said it was not yet determined whether those detained were working on those contracts at the time of the incident or under the auspices of a contract with another agency in Iraq.

“At this point we have not determined whether these individuals were acting on a U.S. contract at the time of this incident,” Leighton said. “They may have been working for another contract at the time that they were detained.”

Iraq Media:

Baghdad, Nov 19, (VOI)- The Director of the National Command Centre General Abdul Karim Khalaf said on Monday that Iraqi security forces arrested guards from a foreign security firm after shooting a woman in central Baghdad.

“Guards from a foreign security firm opened fire against a woman near al-Sabaa Qusour crossroads in Karada this afternoon,” Khalaf told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

“Police forces arrested the owner of the vehicle who opened the fire against the woman as well as Sirilanki workers, who were accompanying him,” the general added.

“The woman was wounded in her leg and was rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment,” he noted.

The general refused to announce the name of the firm or the number of the captives, asserting that investigation still underway.

Iraqi interior minister on Thursday assigned a senior officer to search the headquarters of foreign security firms working in Iraq after the recent incidents involving some of these companies.

Two Iraqi civilians were seriously injured on Wednesday when the guards of a U.S. security company opened fired on them in eastern Baghdad.
The wounded were members of one family and were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

On September 16, personnel from the private U.S. security company Blackwater allegedly opened random fire after two mortar shells fell near a U.S. embassy motorcade that was passing in Sahat al-Nosur area, western Baghdad, killing and injuring scores of civilians.

The New York Times said in a report on Wednesday that U.S. Federal agents investigating the Sept 16 incident in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq.

The incident drew extreme indignation on the Iraqi streets as the Iraqi parliament called to restrict the work of private security companies in Iraq and to amend a decision by the former U.S. civil administrator of Iraq Paul Bremer that grants these firms legal immunity.