their interpreters on a busy Kabul street called Jalalabad Road at around 9 p.m. when a car slammed into one of their two cars . `` I immediately thought we were under attack , '' McClain said in May . The contractors got out to help their colleagues , and the vehicle that had struck the car did a U-turn and headed back at them , the men said . The contractors fired at the oncoming vehicle . `` The car was coming at us , '' Cannon said in May . `` At that point we attempted to stop and immobilize the vehicle and we engaged it in small arms fire . And the car did n't stop , it just kept going . '' The incident spotlights the issue of the role and conduct of U.S. security contractors in Afghanistan . A similar issue arose in Iraq after a September 2007 confrontation involving then-Blackwater contractors that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead . Blackwater lost its contract there after Iraq 's government refused to renew its operating license . The company then changed its name to Xe , and it continues to receive multimillion-dollar contracts in Afghanistan . In
Washington -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Two men who worked as security contractors for the company formerly known as Blackwater have been charged with murder in the killings of two Afghan men , federal prosecutors announced Thursday . Christopher Drotleff and Justin Cannon are charged with two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder each in connection with the May shootings in Kabul . The 12-count , 19-page indictment returned by a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia also includes weapons charges against the two men . The indictment was returned Wednesday but unsealed Thursday . Both men were in Afghanistan working for the security company Paravant , a subsidiary of Xe , the military contracting firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide . FBI agents have arrested both men , the Justice Department announced . Drotleff , Cannon and two other contractors , Steven McClain and Armando Hamid , were involved in the May 5 , 2009 , shooting that left two Afghan civilians dead and another wounded . The men had been hired by Paravant to help the U.S. Army train Afghan troops . The contractors said they were driving