Uncle Sam
11-07-2003, 08:58 AM
TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 7 — A U.S. Army helicopter crashed Friday into a riverbank near Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, killing six U.S. soldiers, the military said. In the northern city of Mosul, meanwhile, two Americans were killed and nine wounded in attacks, raising concerns that the insurgency was spreading north.
IT WAS not immediately clear if the chopper was brought down by hostile fire or a mechanical failure, the military said. But an officer who asked not to be identified said the Black Hawk might have been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
“Six soldiers were on board and all of them were killed,” said Maj. Jossyln Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit. All were from the 101st Airborne Division, she said.
Separately, guerrillas attacked a convoy in Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad, with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire Friday morning. The military said one U.S. soldier died and six others were wounded in the clash.
Three others were injured later Friday when a roadside bomb exploded near the downtown Mosul Hotel, which is used as a military barracks. And a military statement released Friday said a soldier died the day before near Mosul when a homemade bomb exploded.
31 DEAD IN A WEEK
The latest confirmed U.S. military fatalities bring to at least 31 the number of soldiers killed in action in the first week of November. The largest tally came when an Army Chinook helicopter was shot down last Sunday. On Thursday a soldier injured in the crash died, taking the death toll to 16.
In addition, two American civilians working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a Polish officer died in attacks over the past seven days.
Since U.S. President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, 146 soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq.
If Friday’s helicopter incident is confirmed to have been an attack, it would be the third U.S. chopper shot down in two weeks.
On Oct. 25, guerrillas brought down a Black Hawk in Tikrit with a rocket-propelled grenade. The helicopter made an emergency landing, and all five crew members escaped before it was engulfed in flames.
The spate of attacks in the past week in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, has raised concerns among U.S. military commanders that the insurgency is spreading into that region from its main stronghold in the so-called Sunni Triangle, to the west and north of Baghdad.
The city is close to the semiautonomous Kurdish areas that lie between it and the Turkish border.
It was the first combat death for Poland, which has 2,400 soldiers in Iraq and is in charge of a large swath of south-central Iraq where about 9,500 soldiers of several nations help maintain security.
Near the restive town of Baquba, hundreds of U.S. troops backed up by armored vehicles raided a village on Friday. Locals said the troops were looking for Rashid Taan Kazim, a former Baath Party official who is number 49 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi fugitives.
The raid ended without anybody on the most-wanted list being captured, U.S. officers said. Saddam — top of the list with a $25 million price on his head — remains on the run.
A new U.S. covert commando force created to hunt Osama bin Laden and Saddam came close to finding the deposed Iraqi leader, military sources told The New York Times. Called Task Force 121, it includes troops from the Army, Navy and Air Force and is supplemented by a conventional force that can be used to secure the perimeter of an area where a raid is about to take place, the paper said Friday.
In al-Assad, a desert base 155 miles northwest of Baghdad, hundreds of U.S. soldiers, some wearing ceremonial spurs and black regimental hats, assembled late Thursday to remember their comrades killed in the helicopter shootdown last Sunday, the deadliest single attack against U.S. forces since the Iraq war began March 20. Army officials said the
helicopter’s crew apparently had a last-second warning of an approaching missile and managed to launch flares designed to draw the heat-seeking missile away. The defensive measure did not work and the missile slammed into the right side of the helicopter’s rear engine.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=110720030547
IT WAS not immediately clear if the chopper was brought down by hostile fire or a mechanical failure, the military said. But an officer who asked not to be identified said the Black Hawk might have been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
“Six soldiers were on board and all of them were killed,” said Maj. Jossyln Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit. All were from the 101st Airborne Division, she said.
Separately, guerrillas attacked a convoy in Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad, with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire Friday morning. The military said one U.S. soldier died and six others were wounded in the clash.
Three others were injured later Friday when a roadside bomb exploded near the downtown Mosul Hotel, which is used as a military barracks. And a military statement released Friday said a soldier died the day before near Mosul when a homemade bomb exploded.
31 DEAD IN A WEEK
The latest confirmed U.S. military fatalities bring to at least 31 the number of soldiers killed in action in the first week of November. The largest tally came when an Army Chinook helicopter was shot down last Sunday. On Thursday a soldier injured in the crash died, taking the death toll to 16.
In addition, two American civilians working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a Polish officer died in attacks over the past seven days.
Since U.S. President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, 146 soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq.
If Friday’s helicopter incident is confirmed to have been an attack, it would be the third U.S. chopper shot down in two weeks.
On Oct. 25, guerrillas brought down a Black Hawk in Tikrit with a rocket-propelled grenade. The helicopter made an emergency landing, and all five crew members escaped before it was engulfed in flames.
The spate of attacks in the past week in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, has raised concerns among U.S. military commanders that the insurgency is spreading into that region from its main stronghold in the so-called Sunni Triangle, to the west and north of Baghdad.
The city is close to the semiautonomous Kurdish areas that lie between it and the Turkish border.
It was the first combat death for Poland, which has 2,400 soldiers in Iraq and is in charge of a large swath of south-central Iraq where about 9,500 soldiers of several nations help maintain security.
Near the restive town of Baquba, hundreds of U.S. troops backed up by armored vehicles raided a village on Friday. Locals said the troops were looking for Rashid Taan Kazim, a former Baath Party official who is number 49 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqi fugitives.
The raid ended without anybody on the most-wanted list being captured, U.S. officers said. Saddam — top of the list with a $25 million price on his head — remains on the run.
A new U.S. covert commando force created to hunt Osama bin Laden and Saddam came close to finding the deposed Iraqi leader, military sources told The New York Times. Called Task Force 121, it includes troops from the Army, Navy and Air Force and is supplemented by a conventional force that can be used to secure the perimeter of an area where a raid is about to take place, the paper said Friday.
In al-Assad, a desert base 155 miles northwest of Baghdad, hundreds of U.S. soldiers, some wearing ceremonial spurs and black regimental hats, assembled late Thursday to remember their comrades killed in the helicopter shootdown last Sunday, the deadliest single attack against U.S. forces since the Iraq war began March 20. Army officials said the
helicopter’s crew apparently had a last-second warning of an approaching missile and managed to launch flares designed to draw the heat-seeking missile away. The defensive measure did not work and the missile slammed into the right side of the helicopter’s rear engine.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/870749.asp?vts=110720030547