BAGHDAD -- US officials are worried that Iraqi police -- not just impostors in Iraqi uniforms -- may have been behind the killings of two coalition staff members and their translator, the top American general in Iraq said yesterday.
The three were the first civilians from the US occupation authority to be killed in Iraq. One of the Americans was 33-year-old Fern Holland, a human rights specialist from Oklahoma who worked on women's issues in the Hillah region where she was killed.
"If I die, know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing," Holland wrote in a Jan. 21 e-mail to a friend in Tulsa.
She met often with Iraqi women around Hillah and communicated their needs to Iraq's Governing Council, even influencing the interim constitution completed this week, said one of her colleagues, Judy Van Rest.
"She was extremely dedicated to what she was doing," Van Rest said. "She carried a lot of hope with her about the future of Iraq."
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, according to his wife, Brenda Zangas.
The military reported today that two American soldiers were killed when the Humvee they were riding in struck a homemade bomb northeast of Habbiniyah in the Sunni Triangle.
A third soldier was injured in the blast yesterday and hospitalized in stable condition. The troops were part of the First Brigade Combat Team of Task Force All-American.
The shooting Tuesday night raised two possibilities: that guerrillas had adopted a new tactic of posing as police to carry out attacks, or that some members of the security forces being trained by US troops are turning to violence.
The Americans and an Iraqi woman, Salwa Ali, working as their translator, were driving 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.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the US 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," said Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad.
"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 US military, which has been training Iraq's new police force, is trying "to ensure that they are truly serving their communities," he said.
