Iraqi authorities said a U.S. aid worker was shot and killed in an ambush attack on Monday in Baghdad.
Two Iraqi officials said that the unidentified aid worker was shot dead after another vehicle cut him off as he was about to enter the street where he lives in the city’s central Karrada district.
Two assailants jumped out of another vehicle and shot the aid worker dead as the worker’s wife and child were in the vehicle with him during the ordeal, according to The Associated Press. Authorities made it clear that it is unknown at this time if the assailants were attempting to kidnap the aid worker.
Baghdad’s Karrada district, a neighborhood mixed with Christian and Muslim middle-class families, according to the AP, was virtually empty Monday night as Iraqi police heavily patrolled the area.
Documents obtained by the newswire detailed that the aid worker had been renting out an apartment in Karrada’s Wahda area since May 2021.
A medical official said that the aid worker was dead on arrival at a nearby medical facility.
Two security officials also said that the individual worked for an international aid organization, adding that an investigation into the aid worker’s death has begun, the AP reported.
Americans being attacked in Baghdad has been a rarity since the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, compared to the number of attacks against Americans in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the AP.
In a statement, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani vowed to form a committee within the interior ministry and various security agencies in an effort to investigate the death of the U.S. aid worker.
In a separate statement, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that officials are aware of the reports of the aid worker’s death, noting that the department is not yet in a position to confirm the accounts of the death or if the individual was a U.S. citizen.
The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment and more information.