'Contractors' shoot Stryker soldiers by mistake

Members of the Stryker brigade

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Civilian security contractors wounded two Fort Lewis soldiers in a case of friendly fire Saturday, capping a violent day in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliyah. It happened in an area known among troops as RPG Alley, short for the rocket-propelled grenades favored by enemy fighters.

The soldiers were hurt while trying to stop an ambush on a supply convoy the contractors were guarding. The contractors “obviously didn’t know we were there. They saw shooting and returned fire,” said Capt. Matt Pike of Lacey, commander of Comanche Company of the 1st Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment.

One of the C Company soldiers was shot in the leg. The other was hit in the face with shrapnel. Pike said the injuries are minor and both men were expected to be fit enough to return to duty today. The Army wasn’t releasing their names until their families could be contacted.

The soldiers are part of 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the team of Strykers that returned to Iraq this summer from Fort Lewis. The brigade has battalions in Baghdad and Mosul, in the north.

Heavily armed private security contractors, many of them Americans or working for U.S. companies, are common in Iraq. Pike, after returning from the scene of Saturday’s firefight, said the identity of the contractors who fired on his troops was not immediately clear. He said there will be an investigation.

Pike wasn’t happy. The contractors should have the ability to distinguish friend from foe in the battle zone, he said.

The contractors were escorting a convoy of trailers carrying new pickup trucks on a major Baghdad thoroughfare where attacks are common.

About 10 insurgents ambushed the convoy with rocket-propelled grenades about 6 p.m., Iraq time.

A small team of C Company soldiers, who had been in the area lying in wait for enemy activity, then fired on the attackers. So did the contractors.

The contractors turned their weapons on the soldiers, not realizing who they were, said Lt. Craig Coppock of DuPont, who led the soldiers trying to protect the convoy.

Coppock said his troops didn’t fire back on the contractors. His men did report killing four enemy fighters and wounding four during the exchange.

Pike said the contractors were firing indiscriminately but that there was no evidence of Iraqi civilian deaths. He said a van was caught in the crossfire between the contractors and the insurgents and four people were injured, none seriously.

Two semitrucks with trailers from the convoy were engulfed in flames, and a pickup used by the security contractors was destroyed. The contractors didn’t stick around, so it’s unknown whether they had casualties.

This was the second attack on Comanche Company on Saturday near the infamous RPG Alley. A Stryker vehicle was hit by sniper fire Saturday morning in almost the same spot. No one was hurt in the morning attack, which came as C Company was guarding an explosives team that was disposing of a roadside bomb found beneath an overpass.

It is the same area where two Comanche Company soldiers died in an improvised explosive blast last month.

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