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US Troops Kill Two
Iraqi Policemen

8-11-3


(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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
"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.
 
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.
 
"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.
 
"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.
 
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.
 
A car the Al-Yarmuk deputy police chief said was the one involved in the incident was in the yard of the police station.
 
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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