- (AFP) -- US soldiers in Baghdad on Saturday shot dead
an Iraqi policeman they mistook for an attacker, killed another as he tried
to surrender to them and beat a third, a survivor of the incident said.
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- The three Iraqi officers were firing from their unmarked
car at a suspect vehicle they were chasing when the Americans opened fire
on them in a western suburb of the capital, Sergeant Hamza Atiya Muhsen,
who said he was driving the car, told AFP.
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- Lieutenant Colonel Muayad Farhan, deputy head of Al-Yarmuk
police station where the dead officers were based, confirmed that two of
his officers had been shot by coalition forces.
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- The US military said it was aware of an incident but
unable to provide information. But army spokesman Staff Sergeant JJ Johnson
said there had been a case of "blue on blue" on Saturday, a term
for an incident where friendly forces fire on one another.
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- As the Al-Yarmuk deputy police chief spoke, two US military
police officers came to offer their condolences to him. They asked not
to be named but said they believed the two officers had been shot by US
troops after being mistaken for attackers.
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- Sergeant Nahi said one of his colleagues was shot as
he sat in the back seat of their white Hyundai car, which is the same make
and colour as many other Iraqi police vehicles but did not have the blue
markings and police numbering.
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- The third officer, who was uniformed, was shot as he
got out from the front passenger seat and held his hands in the air, holding
his coalition-issued yellow police badge and shouting "police, police",
said Nahi.
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- "The second time he said it he was shot. He was
hit in the right eye. He was hit by a machine gun that was firing at us
right from the start of the incident," said Nahi, who said the incident
took place outside a cement factory on the Abu Gharib Road.
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- Nahi, who said he was in civilian clothes but wearing
the large police armband and wearing the yellow police badge around his
neck, said after the firing had stopped he got out of the car and held
his hands up.
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- "Three soldiers surrounded me. I got down on my
knees, hands in the air, holding my badge. One of them kicked me in the
back and I fell to the ground. Another one kicked me twice in the face.
They put their boots on my head and pressed it into the ground.
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- "I kept saying 'police, police'; I don't speak English
but it's the same word in Arabic," said Nahi, who said the beating
lasted several minutes.
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- Nahi showed AFP cuts to his nose and head, a black eye,
and took off his shirt to display bruises over much of his back and on
his chest.
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- A car the Al-Yarmuk deputy police chief said was the
one involved in the incident was in the yard of the police station.
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- There were dark stains on the back seat and the vehicle
had six bullet holes on the passenger side, 10 bullet holes in the front
window, which had remained intact, one on the driver's side and one in
the roof.
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