U.S. worries over possible police link to Iraq killings

By Lee Keath
The Associated Press

	NABEEL AL-JURANI / AP Mays’a Falih Abdul Kareem, left, is comforted after learning her two sisters, laundry women for the U.S.-led coalition forces, were shot to death yesterday near Basra in southern Iraq.
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The three were the first civilians from the U.S. occupation authority to be killed in Iraq.

One of them was Fern Holland, 33, a human-rights expert from Oklahoma who worked on women's issues in the Hillah region where she died.

"If I die, know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing," Holland wrote in an e-mail to a friend in Tulsa on Jan. 21.

She met often with Iraqi women around Hillah and relayed their needs to Iraq's Governing Council, even influencing the interim constitution approved this week, said colleague Judy Van Rest.

The other American killed was Robert J. Zangas, 44, of suburban Pittsburgh. Zangas went to Iraq last year with his Marine Corps Reserve unit and returned as a regional press officer with the coalition, said his wife, Brenda Zangas.

The Americans and an Iraqi woman working as their translator were driving Tuesday night near Hillah, 35 miles south of Baghdad, when they were stopped at a checkpoint and killed by gunmen.

The attackers then took their car, their bodies still inside, according to the Polish military, which patrols the area. Polish troops stopped the car and arrested the five Iraqis inside.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said it was not yet known if the attackers were disguised as police or the real thing.

"They were in police uniforms. We haven't established that it was the police," Sanchez said.

"We are very concerned about it," Sanchez said. "We know that this has gone on ... that there are some policemen that have done criminal acts in the past."
 
The U.S. military, which has been training Iraq's new police force, is trying "to ensure that they are truly serving their communities," he said.

Just as the attack near Hilla underscored the dangers faced by the roughly 3,000 Americans working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, a similar slaying demonstrated that Iraqis who assist the occupation are also targets.

Officials said yesterday two Iraqi women were fatally shot Wednesday near the southern city of Basra. They were employed as laundry workers under a contract with Kellogg Brown & Root — a unit of Halliburton, which is repairing oil fields and providing support to U.S. troops.

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