Battle
2004 An attack on Blackwater contractors.
The 2004 Fallujah ambush occurred on March 31, 2004, when Iraqi insurgents attacked a convoy containing four American contractors from the private military company Blackwater USA who were conducting a delivery for food caterers ESS.
The contractors were killed, and their charred corpses were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates. Photographs of the event circulated widely.
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Text from the Wikipedia article “2004 Fallujah ambush”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The 2004 Fallujah ambush occurred on March 31, 2004, when Iraqi insurgents attacked a convoy containing four American contractors from the private military company Blackwater USA who were conducting a delivery for food caterers ESS.
The contractors were killed, and their charred corpses were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates. Photographs of the event circulated widely.
The four contractors — Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Mike Teague — were killed and dragged from their vehicles. Their bodies were beaten, burned, dragged through the city streets, and hung from a Euphrates River bridge.
Photos of the event, showing jubilant Iraqis posing with the charred corpses, were released to news agencies worldwide. It caused a great deal of indignation in the United States and undermined the media narrative that US involvement in Iraq was a short-term operation welcomed by the civilian population.
The ambush led to the First Battle of Fallujah, a U.S.-led operation to retake control of the city. The operation failed and U.S. forces withdrew after nearly four weeks. Seven months later, in November 2004, a second mission to capture the city, the Second Battle of Fallujah, proved successful.
Intelligence reports concluded that the attack was planned by Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi. He was captured by Navy SEALs in 2009, five years later. al-Isawi was held for a time by the United States intelligence community, including at Camp Schwedler. In 2010, he testified at a court-martial of SEALs he accused of mistreating him. He was subsequently handed over to Iraqi authorities for trial and executed by hanging some time before November 2013.
The families of the victims filed suit (Helvenston et al. v. Blackwater Security) against Blackwater USA for wrongful death in January 2005.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2004 Fallujah ambush”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.