BAGHDAD – A US soldier opened fire on fellow troops at one of the main US bases in Baghdad yesterday, killing five, the US military said.
“The shooter is a US soldier and he is in custody,” said Marine Corps Lieut Tom Garnett, a US military spokesman in Iraq. US officials plan to charge the shooter.
The shooting took place around 2pm local time at Camp Liberty, a sprawling, dusty base located next to the Baghdad airport.
“This is certainly an unexpected and tragic event,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.
The number of US soldiers killed in the shooting matched the death toll from a truck bomb in northern Iraq last month, which was the single deadliest incident for US troops in more than a year.
Violence has reduced sharply in Iraq, but insurgent attacks continue and a rash of major bombings has raised questions about security less than two months before US forces are due to withdraw combat troops from urban bases.
That transition is one major milestone ahead of an end to US combat operations in August 2010 and a full withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. There are about 134,000 US troops in Iraq.
Thirteen US soldiers were killed in combat in April.
The shootings follow several incidents recently when gunmen dressed as Iraqi soldiers have fired on American troops, including an attack in the northern city of Mosul on May 2nd when two soldiers and the gunman were killed.
Attacks on officers by their own combat troops, commonly known as fraggings, were not uncommon during the Vietnam war as morale in the ranks eroded during the campaign.
But the only other member of the US military convicted of murdering a superior since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began is army Sgt Hasan Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division. Akbar was sentenced to death for a 2003 grenade-and-rifle attack at a base in Kuwait before his unit’s move into in Iraq.
Meanwhile, a senior Iraqi traffic officer was assassinated on his way to work in Baghdad. It was the second attack on a high-ranking traffic police officer in the capital in as many days.
A car cut off General Abdul-Hussein al-Kadhoumi as he drove through a central square in the capital and a second vehicle pulled up alongside and riddled him with bullets. Al-Kadhoumi was director of operations for the traffic authority. – (Reuters/AP)