U.S. Soldier Kills 5 Comrades in Iraq, Military Says

Published: May 11, 2009 By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

BAGHDAD — The United States military said Monday that five American soldiers had been shot to death by a fellow soldier who opened fire on them at one of the biggest American bases in Baghdad, and that the suspected shooter was in custody.
The killings appeared to be the worst case of lethal non-combat casualties for the American forces in Iraq since the invasion more than six years ago.
The shooting took place at around 2 p.m. local time at Camp Liberty, a sprawling base next to Baghdad airport, the military said in a statement. The names of the dead soldiers were being withheld pending family notification, the statement said.
“Anytime we lose one of our own, it affects us all,” Col. John Robinson, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, said in the statement.
CNN, citing unnamed officials, said that at least three others were wounded in the attack, which it said had taken place at a clinic for soldiers suffering from war stress.
The killing of American troops by their fellow soldiers is infrequent, but not unheard of. The latest incident in Iraq occurred in September, when an American soldier was arrested following the shooting deaths of two American soldiers at their patrol base near Iskandariya.
All three soldiers were assigned to the Third Battalion, Seventh Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga.
In November 2006, Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez, serving with the New York National Guard, was arraigned in a military court on charges of murdering two officers in an explosion at one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in Tikrit in June 2005.
And in April 2005, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, of the 101st Airborne Division, was sentenced to death for a grenade attack on his comrades in March 2003 in Kuwait, at the beginning of the war.
Sergeant Akbar was convicted of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder after he threw grenades into tents and then fired on soldiers, killing two officers and wounding 14 at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait.
About one in six soldiers returning from the war in Iraq shows signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or other emotional difficulties, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2004.
The death toll from the Monday shooting was the highest for American personnel in a single attack since April 10, when a suicide truck driver killed five American soldiers with a blast near a police headquarters in Mosul, news agencies reported.
Violence has dropped sharply in Iraq, but a rash of major bombings by insurgents has raised questions about security less than two months before American forces are due to withdraw combat troops from urban bases.
Earlier this month, two American soldiers were killed by a man wearing an Iraqi Army uniform at an Iraqi military training center south of Mosul.
In April, 18 American military personnel members were killed in Iraq — double the number in March and the highest since September 2008, when 25 were killed.