Report adds detail to account of ambush

The report released Thursday added layers of detail about what went wrong in the Fallujah ambush of four Blackwater contractors. Here's an account of the mission distilled from the full report:

At 3 p.m. on March 30, 2004, a Blackwater team of four men in two Mitsubishi Pajeros set out from Camp Taji, escorting three empty flatbed trucks. Each vehicle was unarmored, except for a metal plate attached to the rear seat. Each vehicle was short one man, a rear gunner, and lacked proper maps and directions.

The convoy went to Camp Fallujah, on the mistaken belief that was their destination. Once at the camp, just east of Fallujah, the Blackwater men found no one from ESS, the European food company for whom they provided security.

The convoy then set out for Camp Ridgeway, west of Fallujah, but was stopped at a military checkpoint. It returned to Camp Fallujah for the night, where contractors working for Kellogg, Brown and Root gave the Blackwater men multiple warnings to avoid Fallujah.

The next morning, the convoy set out, armed with mini M-4 rifles and semiautomatic pistols. The drivers of the flatbed trucks, who survived the ambush, said the convoy was waved through a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.

Blackwater has said the ICDC led the convoy into the ambush. The drivers of the flatbed trucks, however, told investigators that there was no evidence that the ICDC participated.

When the convoy entered Fallujah, Iraqi police stopped the convoy and spoke with the occupants of the lead vehicle, Wesley Batalona and Jerry Zovko, who spoke Arabic. A few blocks down the road, traffic stopped in the four-lane road. The lead Blackwater vehicle was in the left lane, followed by two trucks. The third truck was in the right lane, followed by Scott Helvenston and Michael Teague.

While the convoy was stopped in traffic, four or five boys approached the lead Blackwater vehicle. The men rolled their windows down and Zovko spoke briefly with the boys, who walked to a large group of people and spoke to two men. After several minutes, insurgents bearing AK-47s attacked the rear vehicle, killing Teague and Helvenston. The lead vehicle tried to make a U-turn but was blocked by oncoming traffic. At least five insurgents then attacked the vehicle, killing Batalona and Zovko. One insurgent carried a video camera, which captured images of Batalona slumped toward Zovko, who leaned back in his seat, his face shattered.

The three truck drivers drove on. To escape, they had to do a U-turn and pass by the ambush, where they saw that a crowd, chanting and yelling, had set the vehicles on fire. The insurgents apparently didn't realize the trucks were part of the convoy.