Iraq's Interior Ministry formed a committee to investigate the killing of two women by guards working for an Australian-owned security firm in central Baghdad, a ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.
"A committee formed by the Interior Ministry would launch an investigation Wednesday about the killing of two women by foreign security guards on Tuesday on the main road in Karradah neighborhood in central Baghdad," Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf told reporters.
Foreign security guards escorting a convoy of four sport utility vehicles (SUVs) opened fire on a civilian car and killed two women near the Masbah Intersection in Karradah, according to the police.
Witnesses said that the killed driver was Maroni Awanis, a 49-year-old Christian woman who works as a Taxi driver.
Another female passenger in the front seat also died of gunshots in the head, they said, adding that a third woman passenger was wounded in the shoulder, while her child was injured by flying glass.
A spokesman for Unity Resources Group, a security firm whose head office is in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, admitted that its guards were involved in Tuesday's shooting. The company is run by former Australian army personnel.
"The first information that we have is that our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and a signal flare. Finally, shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped," the company said in a statement.
The incident came two days after the Iraqi government threatened to punish service members of a U.S.-based security firm Blackwater for their allegedly deliberate killing of 17 Iraqis in the Nusour Square in western Baghdad.
Source:Xinhua
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