IRAQ: Airport closed after U.S. troops kill engineer near checkpoint

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Iraqi employees of Baghdad International Airport shut down the facility for two hours to protest the killing of an Iraqi engineer by American soldiers near a checkpoint, an airline official told Babylon & Beyond.

An engineer named Karim Obaid Bardan was shot dead in his car after he allegedly failed to stop or slow down as he neared a checkpoint before dawn Sunday morning, a U.S. military spokesman told the Associated Press.

An official at Iraqi Airways, speaking on condition of anonymity, said outraged airport personnel closed down the airport for two hours in protest. ‘Why such killing?’ the Iraqi official demanded. ‘Where is the security agreement between the government and the U.S.? Was this the democracy they brought to us? Democracy of killing?’

He added of the victim, ‘He was an official going to his job.’

-- Los Angeles Times Baghdad bureau