A rocket attack on Baghdad's international Green Zone on Thursday killed two Ugandans and a Peruvian working for a US security contractor hired to protect US facilities in Iraq, the US embassy said. The fortified Green Zone lies on the bank of the Tigris River and hosts government ministries, parliament and government officials' homes as well as foreign embassies, including the massive US embassy complex.
Fifteen people, two of them American, were wounded in the attack, the embassy said in a statement. The dead and wounded all worked for the contractor Triple Canopy, a firm based in Herndon, Virginia, founded by US special forces veterans. Its guards man security checkpoints for the embassy and US military facilities in Iraq.
"This cruel and senseless attack will not deter the United States from carrying out its goal of working with the Iraqi government and people to build a democratic future," the embassy said. US officials declined to say exactly where the rocket landed. An Iraqi police source said it struck near the sprawling US embassy complex. Violence in Iraq has subsided sharply since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, when tens of thousands of people were killed. But scores of civilians die each month in bombings and shootings.