A US government incident report of a deadly shooting in Iraq involving the US security firm Blackwater says armed insurgents attacked a diplomatic convoy and the company`s guards returned fire, US media reported Monday.
Details of the incident report published by an international weekly online edition differ from that offered by Iraqi witnesses and the US embassy in Baghdad, according to which an explosion led the guards to react to what they believed was a car bomb.

Eight people were killed and 13 wounded in the shootout, after which the Iraqi government announced that it was revoking the license of the powerful North Carolina private contracting firm.

According to the weekly, the "skirmish occurred at 12:08 pm on Sunday when `the motorcade was engaged with small arms fire from several locations` as it moved through a neighborhood of west Baghdad."

"The team returned fire to several identified targets," the weekly quoted the US government prepared incident report as saying. "Some eyewitnesses said the fighting began after an explosion detonated near the US convoy, but the incident report does not reflect that," the weekly said.

A Blackwater official told the magazine that "contrary to some reports from Iraq, `the convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job, they fired back to defend human life.`"

A US embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad, Mirembe Nantongo, said while talking to an international news agency earlier that the shooting happened when the private security guards "reacted to a car bomb."

Embassy information officer W. Johann Schmonsees said, "The car bomb was in proximity to where State Department personnel were meeting. This is the reason Blackwater responded to that."

An Iraqi witness to the shootout who was being treated for five gunshot wounds in Baghdad`s Al-Yarmukh Hospital told the news agency he heard an explosion and saw the convoy two cars ahead of him.

"The foreigners in the convoy started shouting and signaling us to go back. I turned around and must have driven 100 feet (30 metres) when they started shooting.

Iraqi security officials said most of the dead and wounded were bystanders.

Blackwater employs nearly 1,000 people in Iraq and operates a fleet of helicopters offering security to US embassy officials and other Americans and escorts for convoys on the country`s dangerous roads.

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