US aid worker shot dead in Baghdad in rare attack: Officials

Iraqi police sources stated the attackers seem to have been trying to kidnap the person.

Iraqi security forces gather outside a morgue
Iraqi safety forces collect outdoors a morgue of Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Baghdad, Monday, November 7, 2022 [Hadi Mizban/AP Photo]

Assailants have shot lifeless an American help employee in Baghdad in a uncommon killing of a foreigner within the Iraqi capital lately, police officers stated.

The person was shot in his automotive on Monday as he entered the road the place he lives in Karrada, a vigorous industrial district within the coronary heart of the Iraqi capital.

“Our preliminary investigation and eyewitnesses confirmed that armed males have been attempting to kidnap the American citizen,” an Iraqi police main stated.

Two safety officers confirmed a United States citizen who labored for a global help organisation had been killed with out giving his title.

Police sources additionally stated that the person’s spouse and little one have been within the automotive with him however weren't harm.

The assault occurred after the person was lower off whereas driving within the streets by one automotive, whereas assailants in one other automotive shot him lifeless.

Iraq’s state information company (INA) stated that the nation’s armed forces’ commander-in-chief gave an order to kind an investigative committee into the killing of the US citizen.

US State Division spokesman Ned Worth instructed reporters the division is conscious of the reviews of the killing of a US help employee in Baghdad and is trying into them. However, he stated the division was not but ready to verify the accounts of the demise or that the particular person was a US citizen.

In response to paperwork seen by The Related Press information company, the person had been renting an condo in Karrada’s Wahda space since Could final 12 months.

Nobody instantly claimed accountability for the killing.

The US Embassy in Baghdad was unable to offer a direct remark.

Such assaults towards people within the Iraqi capital have been uncommon for the reason that defeat of the ISIL (ISIS) group within the nation in 2017 however rockets are generally fired in direction of the US Embassy.

In March 2021, a US civilian contractor died of a coronary heart assault whereas sheltering from a rocket assault on an Iraqi base internet hosting troops from the US-led coalition combating ISIL.

And in March 2020, two months after the assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone assault in Baghdad, two American troopers and one British soldier have been killed in an identical assault – the deadliest in years.

Monday’s assault got here after Iraq’s new authorities cupboard headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was given a vote of confidence by parliament in late October. Al-Sudani was named by the Iran-backed Coordination Framework, composed largely of Shia events.

Iraq held early elections greater than a 12 months in the past in response to mass anti-government protests that started in October 2019 in Baghdad and throughout southern Iraq. Protesters known as for the overhaul of the political system established after the 2003 US-led invasion.

US-led coalition forces lately ended their fight mission in Iraq however proceed to play an advisory function to Iraqi forces within the combat towards ISIL.

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