Blackwater commandos and a U.S. soldier defend the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Najaf.
"With their ammunition nearly gone, a wounded and badly bleeding Marine on the rooftop, and no reinforcement by the U.S. military in the immediate offing, the company sent in helicopters to drop ammunition and pick up the Marine. The identity of the Marine and two other wounded men could not be established, but their blood was still fresh hours later, when the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, and spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt arrived to survey the battle zone.
Without commenting at a news conference yesterday on the role of the Blackwater guards, Kimmitt described what he saw after the fighting ended. "I know on a rooftop yesterday in An Najaf, with a small group of American soldiers and coalition soldiers . . . who had just been through about 3 1/2 hours of combat, I looked in their eyes, there was no crisis. "They knew what they were here for," he continued. "They'd lost three wounded. We were sitting there among the bullet shells -- the bullet casings -- and, frankly, the blood of their comrades, and they were absolutely confident."
During the defense of the authority headquarters, thousands of rounds were fired and hundreds of 40mm grenades shot. Sources who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of Blackwater's work in Iraq reported an unspecified number of casualties among Iraqis.