BAGHDAD — A U.S. soldier was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting Sunday of a civilian contractor on an American military base in the northern Iraq city of Tikrit, the military said.
The shooting occurred about 8:30 a.m. local time, and the civilian died of his wounds later in the day.
“We can confirm that a soldier has been identified and detained in the alleged shooting incident of a civilian contractor here on Contingency Operating Base Speicher,” U.S. military spokesman Maj. Derrick Cheng said in an e-mail.
The military did not release the nationality of the victim.
However, Houston-based KBR confirmed in an e-mailed statement that he was one of its employees, 27-year-old Lucas Vinson.
“As the Army is leading the investigation of the incident, KBR is not providing further comment at this time,” spokeswoman Heather Browne said in the statement. “We are of course fully cooperating with the Army on its continued investigation.”
Woman, children killed
Elsewhere in northern Iraq, a Kurdish woman and her three children were found shot dead in their home Sunday morning in Banja, a small community just north of Kirkuk. It was unclear whether the shootings were linked to criminal activity or to the region’s Arab-Kurdish tensions.
Police said the children were ages 6, 4 and 2, and that the assailants had shot them with a 9mm pistol. The two older children were girls and the youngest a boy, according to police.
A neighbor, Mohammed Qadir, said he had called the police because he was nervous for the family after they had been left alone by the woman’s husband, a policeman, who had to work overnight.
The husband sat crying in front of his home Sunday. He said he had arrived back from work in the morning shortly before the police arrived and was the first to discover the bodies.
Meanwhile, violence plagued the northern city of Mosul. A bombing targeted a police commander’s convoy and left a pair of his bodyguards wounded, police said. Two people were wounded in an explosion outside a hospital, while in a third blast, two more civilians were wounded, police said.
Related news
Ambush prompts battle that kills dozens of militants
KABUL — A battle in western Afghanistan that included airstrikes killed dozens of Taliban militants after an insurgent ambush left three U.S. troops dead, an Afghan official said Sunday.
The hours-long battle took place Saturday in the western province of Farah after a complex attack killed three Americans and seven Afghan troops, said Afghan army spokesman Maj. Abdul Basir Ghori.
The insurgent ambush involved two roadside bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, Capt. Elizabeth Mathias, a U.S. military spokeswoman, said Sunday. Mathias confirmed that fighting in the west continued for six to eight hours after the ambush but could not provide any casualty figures.
Ghori said about 50 militants were killed in Saturday’s battle, but no other Afghan officials could immediately confirm that figure. The Associated Press
