Troops Kill 5 on Bus Taking Workers to Baghdad Bank

Driver ignores warning shot
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 27, 2007 4:50 AM CST
Troops Kill 5 on Bus Taking Workers to Baghdad Bank
A woman passes by a small garbage dump in a poor area of Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007. According to a UN estimate, fifteen percent of the Iraqi population lives in conditions of extreme poverty. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)   (Associated Press)

Five people were killed today when US soldiers in Baghdad opened fire on a minibus carrying employees to their bank jobs, Iraqi officials reported. The shootings occurred after the bus driver drove into an area restricted to cars and known to be a Shiite militia stronghold. He drove through a US roadblock and failed to heed a warning shot, said American officials.

"We do not know what happened and we asked the multinational forces to investigate the event," said a spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry. In the same neighborhood this weekend, masked gunmen massacred 11 relatives of an Iraqi journalist who has criticized the government. Interior Ministry officials, however, have denied the murders occurred. (More Iraq stories.)

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