Rogue civilians

[TheFatSandRat]

I've noticed that sometimes (often in the Convoy and Bristol maps) the military-modeled civilians will stalk my soldiers until they can pick up a firearm, usually an alien weapon that I haven't researched yet, whereupon they shoot my soldiers in the back.
Are they panicked, or is this some weird AI thing?

[Titan]

I've had that happen before too, I can't tell if it's supposed to be related to this (link) or something is wrong.

Both times it happened (at the military base) they managed to kill half my team before I'd gotten half the aliens. Since I have 4 man teams, that meant 2 were dead, and I was surrounded, so I just hit esc and retry.

[Megakiller]

Well according to storyline the aliens have some way of munipulating humans.So ya, might be a purposeful feature.