Australian guards kill two Armenian women in Baghdad

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two Armenian women - Marou Awanis and Inesa Gasparian - were killed Tuesday by the guards of Australian Unity Resources Group (URG), the Iraqi Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.



American government officials said the guards had been hired to protect financial and policy experts working for an organization under contract with the United States Agency for International Development, a quasi-independent State Department agency that does extensive aid work in Iraq.



The URG said its security team fired after a car failed to stop despite "an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and a signal flare." Some 20 bullets struck the car.



Michael Priddin, chief operating officer of Unity said the firm was working with Iraqi authorities "to find out the results of the shooting incident. ... We are trying to work out a true picture of what happened."



In a statement Tuesday night, Priddin said, "We deeply regret this incident."



The Blackwater guards implicated in the Sept. 16 shooting also were protecting American specialists working under USAID contracts on development projects in Iraq, highlighting the difficult balance facing Western agencies trying to help rebuild Iraq while keeping their own staff safe, Lenta.ru reports.