US fired on Canadian diplomats without warning

Canadian officials dispute the US version of an event involving US soldiers allegedly firing without warning on a consular vehicle carrying four Canadian diplomats. The US military issued a statement saying that US troops in a convoy shot a vehicle carrying the Canadian chargé d'affaires to Iraq and three other diplomats in Baghdad on Jan. 31. The US military said that as the Canadian vehicle approached the convoy on the road, US troops used hand and arm signals ordering it to stop. The statement said the vehicle did not slow down so US troops fired what they called warning shots, fearing a suicide bombing attack. "The rear guard on a US convoy signaled the vehicle to stay back," the statement said. "After it failed to do so and continued moving toward the convoy from behind, warning shots were aimed at the front of the vehicle, away from the passenger area." But a Canadian diplomat who was in the vehicle told a very different version of the incident to CBC News reporter Eric Sorensen. The diplomat, who was not named, said no one in the Canadian vehicles remembered seeing anyone signalling to them. The first sign they had of a problem was when they heard a booming sound. "They just remember kaboom! It happened," said Sorenson, who spoke to the diplomat by telephone from Ottawa. The incident took place after the Canadians pulled out of the British compound in the Green Zone, a heavily fortified area in the center of Baghdad where the Iraqi government office and the US military headquarters are located. The diplomat said the Canadian vehicle–which had a Canadian flag symbol on its dash–waited for a US convoy of five Humvees to pass. Then it followed at a safe distance at about 12 to 15 miles per hour for about five minutes. She said Canadian officials often share the road with US military vehicles and saw nothing unusual about the situation. Unlike the version offered by the US military, the Canadian diplomat told CBC News that the US convoy had pulled entirely off the road and into a staging area behind a barrier. "Again this kind of thing has happened all the time, according to this official, so the Canadian vehicle now carried on down the road after the convoy had pulled all the way over and off to the side," Sorensen said. That's when they heard a loud noise as dust flew up around their vehicle. "They don't know what's happened. They feel they've been hit by a bomb," said Sorensen. "The car comes to a stop. The driver puts his arm outside the car to signal that 'we're not part of whatever blast just happened, we're just stopped here for the moment.' They all ducked down." The diplomat said a US soldier came running over to see whether they were all right, and they all got out of the vehicle. It was only at that point that they realized what had happened. "They realized that two bullets had been fired that hit across the front into the hood of the car, hitting on the passenger side, and one other bullet actually passed across the front of the windscreen and just over the windshield wiper into the front of the passenger compartment," said Sorensen. The chargé d'affaires, Stewart Henderson, was whisked away while the others were debriefed. They all thought that was the end of the incident. They only decided to speak up after the US military came out with a different version of events, the Canadian diplomat told CBC News. Both the Canadian and US military have launched investigations. "Right now, we're talking to the Canadian government about the incident," Todd Vician, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement issued on Feb. 1. "It's a regrettable incident and we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened." Canada's incoming prime minister, Stephen Harper, also said the two countries were working together to resolve the incident. "We're obviously very glad that no one was hurt," he said during a news conference in Ottawa.