The Iraqi government wants US security firm Blackwater to pay $8 million to each of the families of 17 people killed in a shooting, a government source said today.
The source said the $136 million was roughly in line with compensation paid by the Libyan government to the families of the 270 people killed in the 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing over Scotland.
Elsewhere today, private security guards escorting a convoy of four vehicles through central Baghdad killed two women, the Iraqi government said. A spokesman added that an investigation was under way to identify the security company.
An Iraqi government spokesman said on Sunday that an investigation set up by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had found Blackwater "deliberately killed" the 17 people in the September 16th shooting in western Baghdad.
Blackwater has said its guards responded lawfully to a threat against a US State Department convoy it was guarding. The Iraqi spokesman said the investigation had found there was no evidence they had come under fire.
The incident caused outraged among Iraqis who see security contractors like Blackwater as private armies which act with impunity.
Blackwater employs about 1,000 people in Iraq. Its founder, former US Navy SEAL Erik Prince, told a Congressional hearing last week that his men had come under small-arms fire and "returned fire at threatening targets".
US and Iraqi officials on a joint committee have also begun investigating the shooting.
A larger US inquiry into the operations of private contractors in Iraq is also under way, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has ordered tighter controls on Blackwater.