(Updates with U.S. military statement) KIRKUK, Iraq, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A private security team contracted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq opened fire on a taxi on Thursday, wounding three passengers, including two women, police said. Police and the U.S military said the shooting involved guards employed by British security company Erinys and took place east of Qarah Anjir, 25 km (16 miles) east of the city of Kirkuk. Colonel Othman Abdullah, police chief in Qarah Anjir, told Reuters that guards in the convoy of four vehicles had sprayed gunfire into the windscreen of the taxi, wounding two sisters and a video editor for a Kurdish satellite television station. The U.S Army Corps of Engineers said the vehicle had approached the convoy "at a high rate of speed". "The private security team initiated escalating warning procedures under the Rules for the Use of Force, resulting in an alleged injury to a civilian occupant of the vehicle," it said in a statement. It said the Corps of Engineers was in the process of appointing an investigative officer. An official of Erinys in Dubai referred inquiries to the U.S. military. Erinys has been involved in training a protection force to protect Iraq's northern oil pipelines from sabotage. There have been mounting calls for the Iraqi government to tighten controls on private security contractors following a Sept. 16 incident in Baghdad involving the U.S. firm Blackwater in which 17 people were killed. The Iraqi authorities are also investigating another shooting earlier this month in which guards employed by an Australian security firm shot dead two women whose car ventured too close to their convoy. The company said the car had failed to stop despite repeated warnings. In the Blackwater incident, the company, which is employed to protect U.S. State Department personnel in Iraq, said its guards had acted lawfully against a threat to a convoy. On a visit to Washington, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al -Dabbagh repeated the government's desire for Blackwater to leave the country and said all security companies should be held accountable for their actions in Iraq. At present foreign security guards are immune from prosecution in Iraq under a controversial order issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004. "We do need all the security companies to be liable and ... subject to accountability," Dabbagh said. "No country in the world allows security companies to work in the way they are working in Iraq. "We do understand that they do a good job of protecting diplomats and the contractors."
