U.S. contractor shot by U.S. forces near entrance to Camp Anaconda

Saturday, February 10th 2007, 3:01 pm

By: News On 6

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ The U.S. military confirmed on Saturday that American forces at Camp Anaconda, the huge air base north of Baghdad, shot and killed a civilian contract truck driver.

A spokeswoman for KBR, a contracting subsidiary of Halliburton that was formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, said the shooting was under investigation.

Melissa Norcross, the KBR spokeswoman, said the company was not releasing the name of the dead driver or a second person in the truck who was wounded ``to protect the individuals' privacy.''

In Baghdad, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Speaks said, ``There was an escalation of force incident at Camp Anaconda on Feb. 5 (Monday) that resulted in the death of a civilian contractor. The incident is under investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division and KBR.''

An escalation of force incident normally means a driver approaching a checkpoint did not respond to military orders to approach slowly and stop.

``Sadly, 98 KBR employees and subcontractors have lost their lives, and more than 430 have been wounded by hostile action while performing services under the company's government contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait,'' Norcross said in an e-mail response to queries about the incident.

Halliburton is spinning off KBR into its own separate, publicly traded entity.