The US military said yesterday it is investigating a shooting incident near Fallujah last month that led to 19 private security contractors, including 16 Americans, being detained by Marines.
US Marines said the contractors were held for three days after firing on Iraqis and Marines in western Iraq, the military said. No casualties were caused.
Several thousand US Marines are based in Fallujah, a tense city 65km west of Baghdad that was long linked with Iraq's raging insurgency and was the scene of a major US-led offensive in November.
The circumstances surrounding last month's shootings involving 16 American security contractors and three Iraqis are unclear. They were detained May 28 after Iraqi civilians and US Marines were fired at in separate incidents over a three-hour period. US Marines released the contractors May 31.
"Nineteen employees working for a contract security firm in Iraq were temporarily detained and questioned after firing on US Marine positions in the city of Fallujah on Saturday," according to Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan.
Lapan said in a statement that a Marine combat team reported receiving small arms fire from gunman in several late-model trucks and sport utility vehicles.
"Marines also witnessed passengers in the vehicles firing at and near civilian cars on the street," Lapan said.
"Three hours later, another Marine observation post was fired on by gunmen from vehicles matching the description of those involved in the earlier attack," Lapan said. "Marines saw passengers in the vehicles firing out the windows."
Spike strips on the road at a nearby observation post stopped the vehicles and Marines detained the contractors at a military detention facility at Camp Fallujah, just outside the city, before releasing them three days later.
The American security contractors are thought to have left Iraq, the military said. No charges have been laid pending the completion of an inquiry by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The insecurity in Iraq has spawned a thriving private security industry comprising Iraqis and former military personnel from military forces around the world.
Many Iraqis refer to the security personnel, who speed along Iraqi highways in vehicles bristling with automatic weapons, as mercenaries, although many senior government officials use them for their own personal protection.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
Ukrainian drone attacks overnight on several Russian power and energy facilities forced capacity reduction at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and set a fuel export terminal in Ust-Luga on fire, Russian officials said yesterday. A drone attack on the Kursk nuclear plant, not far from the border with Ukraine, damaged an auxiliary transformer and led to 50 percent reduction in the operating capacity at unit three of the plant, the plant’s press service said. There were no injuries and a fire sparked by the attack was promptly extinguished, the plant said. Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding