Italian Calls U.S. Gunfire Unjustified

• Account of Reporter Wounded In Iraq by US Military Differs From Military's
• US Soldiers attacked Journalist: Says companion [more]
  

An Italian journalist freed from captivity in Iraq said Saturday that a "rain of fire" from a U.S. roadside patrol hit her vehicle as it slowly approached the airport in Baghdad, injuring her and killing an Italian intelligence agent also inside. Her version of events ran counter to the one U.S. officials provided a day earlier. Giuliana Sgrena, wearing a plaid shawl draped around her shoulders, was helped down the steps of an airplane at Rome's Ciampino airport after arriving from Baghdad Saturday at noon. She later described the shooting and called the U.S. gunfire on the vehicle unjustified. "We weren't going very fast, given the circumstances. It was not a checkpoint, but a patrol that started firing right after lighting up a spotlight. The firing was not justified by the movement of our automobile," Sgrena, a reporter for the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto, told Italian investigators, according to an account related by an official who interviewed her at a military hospital. A statement released Friday by the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad said troops fired because the car was "traveling at high speeds" and "refused to stop at a checkpoint." The dead military intelligence agent, Nicola Calipari, had helped secure Sgrena's release and was to accompany her on her trip back to Italy. "We thought that the danger was finished after my handover. Instead, suddenly, this shooting. A rain of fire came," Sgrena told a television station by telephone. "Nicola folded himself on me probably to defend me and then he collapsed. I saw that he was dead. The shooting continued and the driver did not even have the opportunity to explain that we were Italian."  [more]

400 ROUNDS STRUCK REPORTER'S CAR, CAR NOW MISSING
The Observer reports up to 400 rounds struck their car "from an armoured vehicle. Rather than calling immediately for assistance for the wounded Italians, the soldiers' first move was to confiscate their weapons and mobile phones and they were prevented from resuming contact with Rome for more than an hour." Sgrena's car, the US claims, is now "lost," and cannot be inspected... [more]

• Foreign minister says killing of Italian agent was accident, demands full investigation and 'culprits be punished' [more]