Branch merge bug

A friend showed me this reduced test case. It seems to work fine with bzr and hg. Is this a git bug?

>: git --version

git version 1.6.3.1

>: git init

Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/lut4rp/Code/tester/.git/

>: echo asdjhaskd >fil
>: git add fil
>: git cm 'initial commit'

[master (root-commit) 9983161] initial commit
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 fil

>: git branch new
>: git branch

* master
  new

>: git mv fil fila
>: git status

# On branch master # Changes to be committed: # (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage) # # renamed: fil -> fila #

>: git cm 'renamed to fila'

[master 9de0953] renamed to fila
 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 rename fil => fila (100%)

>: git co new

Switched to branch 'new'

>: git rm fil

rm 'fil'

>: echo asjhdajkhsdkajhs >fila
>: git add fila
>: git cm 'renamed, heavily modified'

[new 5914271] renamed, heavily modified
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 fil
 create mode 100644 fila

>: git co master

Switched to branch 'master'

>: git merge new

CONFLICT (rename/delete): Rename fil->fila in HEAD and deleted in new Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

>: cat fila

asdjhaskd #### Still the master branch's content, `merge` apparently did nothing.

>: git show :2:fila

asdjhaskd

>: git show :3:fila

fatal: ambiguous argument ':3:fila': unknown revision or path not in the working tree. Use '--' to separate paths from revisions

>: git show new:fila

asjhdajkhsdkajhs ajksh askjdhaksdh kajshdk asd