WASHINGTON - Two Iraqi prisoners were shot trying to escape from a U.S. camp Thursday, and one later died of his wounds, the military said.
U.S. Central Command released few details of the incident, other than to say one prisoner died at an Iraqi hospital and the other was recaptured after the escape attempt.
The dead prisoner was the third of thousands of Iraqis held by the Americans to die while in custody.
American military officials ruled that a Marine acted in self-defense in killing a prisoner on March 29. The Pentagon has launched a criminal investigation into the death of an inmate at a U.S. prisoner camp in Nasiriyah whose corpse was found Friday.
The United States has more than 2,000 Iraqis in custody. They include more than half of the top 55 most wanted Iraqis, other former officials of Saddam Hussein's regime, prisoners of war and looters and other common criminals.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Ten US companies have been asked to submit bids for a plan to reshape the Iraqi economy into a free-market system with a major privatization program.
The US Agency for International Development selected the 10 firms for a streamlined bidding process in an effort to accelerate the restructuring the Iraq economy, USAID spokesman Luke Zahner said Thursday.
Zahner said the bids were requested earlier this month and that the number of firms selected was limited to 10 to "compress the timetable" in an effort to get the project going in six to eight weeks.
The program "will foster economic rehabilitation and reform for Iraq to stimulate the country's international trade and employment," said a USAID statement released this week.
The 10 firms in the competition are: BearingPoint; Booz, Allen and Hamilton; Nathan Associates; IBM Global Services; Development Alternatives, Inc.; Carana Corp; Abt Associates; Chemonics; Deloitte and Touche; and Financial Markets International.
The companies were invited to bid under the terms of a 163-page document describing the project "Economic Recovery, Reform and Sustained Growth in Iraq."
The winning bidder "will provide macroeconomic reform advice, with a focus on tax, fiscal, exchange rate, monetary policy, and banking reform," according to the document.
The contractor "will also seek to change policies, laws and regulations that impede private sector development, trade and investment."
The firm also will help draft plans "to allow for the privatization of state-owned industries and firms and/or establishing a privatization entity."
In Baghdad on Thursday, a top US official said the US-led coalition plans to privatize the first of Iraq's 100 or so state-owned firms within a year as it begins overhauling the centralized economy.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that BearingPoint, which received a similar 40 million dollar job to do economic work in Afghanistan, had been approached on drafting a plan for Iraq.