US envoy regrets death of Swiss-Iraqi man

The United States ambassador to Bern has expressed regret to Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey over last week's killing of a Swiss-Iraqi man.

During a meeting with US envoy Pamela Willeford on Tuesday, Calmy-Rey expressed her "dismay" about the fatal shooting and repeated a call for a rapid clarification of the circumstances.

Salah Jmor, who came from the Kurdish north of Iraq, was killed near the capital, Baghdad, last Tuesday as his car travelled past a US patrol.

The foreign ministry two days ago called on the US authorities to launch an investigation into what appeared to be a mistake by the US army.

Jmor, aged 49 and of Kurdish origin, died on June 28 in a car being driven by his brother on a motorway near Baghdad.
According to his family, he was hit by a bullet fired by a US soldier from a convoy of three military vehicles.

"I was driving when I heard a sharp snap. My brother collapsed. I did not even know who fired because we were slightly behind the Americans... Then I saw the blood flowing," said Abdel Jabbar. Jabbar told the French news agency AFP that two or three soldiers got out of their vehicles, saw his brother and simply said that they were sorry. An ambulance then arrived and took Jmor away from the scene.