Guards Kill Two Women In Iraq

The gunfire sparked chaos on the crowded street as pedestrians ran for cover. A horse pulling a cart, used for selling black-market cooking gas, galloped away without its owner. Traffic policemen believed insurgents were attacking.

"A vehicle got close to them, and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground."

He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?"

The Oldsmobile was shot first in the radiator as it passed a plumbing supply shop, employees said. The shooting continued and the car came to rest about 50 yards away, next to a yellow and white median curb marked by broken glass and blood.

"Probably they were not paying attention and they weren't able to stop right away," said one employee, who would not give his name.

The Oldsmobile, towed to a police station in Karrada, left little doubt how the women died. There were holes from at least 35 bullets that scarred the hood, punctured the windshield, popped tires and shattered three windows. Rivulets of blood ran down the driver's door.

The shots killed the driver, Marony Ohanis, born in 1958, and the front-seat passenger, Geneva Jalal Entranic, born in 1977, relatives said. A woman and a young boy were in the back seat, witnesses said. Police said the boy was shot in the arm. They were all friends who knew one another from the Armenian Orthodox church in Baghdad, relatives said. Christians are a small minority in Iraq.

After her husband died about two years ago from heart trouble, Ohanis, a college graduate with an agriculture degree, made money to support her three daughters by driving friends home from work, said Lida Sarkis, her niece. One of her daughters, a college student in engineering, sobbed as she walked around the broken car.

"She was very calm, she always prayed, she always went to church," Sarkis said. "They killed them. She was stopped. That's all."

In March 2006, a guard employed by Unity Resources Group allegedly shot dead an Australian resident in Baghdad whose car failed to stop at a security checkpoint. After an investigation, the case was eventually settled with the Iraqi authorities, Priddin said.

The company has operated in Iraq since 2004 and mostly protects premises and moving convoys, Priddin said. The firm operates in Pakistan and southern Sudan as well as in Asia and Australia, according to its Web site.

Also Tuesday, violence spiked across the country, with more than 45 people killed in bombings and shootings. In two of the deadliest incidents, suicide car bombers attacked in quick succession in northern Iraq, targeting a local police chief and a prominent Sunni tribal leader who has been working with U.S. troops in the fight against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said.