BAGHDAD: The three security contractors killed and 16 wounded in a rocket attack in Baghdad were all employees of Triple Canopy, which guards US personnel in Iraq, the Virginia-based company said.
"The personnel were… supporting the US State Department and protecting the US embassy," the company said in an overnight statement, referring to the victims of Thursday’s rocket attack on Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
The US embassy had on Thursday said two Ugandans and one Peruvian were killed in the rocket attack and listed two American citizens among the wounded.
Triple Canopy was appointed in March 2009 to take over a lucrative contract to protect US government personnel working in Iraq.
The State Department refused to renew contracts with security firm Blackwater, since renamed Xe, after the Iraq government banned it in January 2009 over the killings by its guards of 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisur Square on September 16, 2007.
The Green Zone, which houses the US and several other major embassies as well as Iraqi government buildings, is still the target of frequent rocket and mortar attacks.
US forces handed full responsibility for the "entry control points" that regulate movement into and out of the area over to Iraqi authorities on June 1.
The transfer was part of an American military drawdown in Iraq that will see all but 50,000 US soldiers leave the country by the end of August.
