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U.S. Helicopter Goes Down Near Tikrit
TIKRIT, Iraq - A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was shot down Saturday by ground fire near Tikrit, a center of Iraq (news - web sites)âs anti-U.S. insurgency, U.S. officials said. The U.S. command in Baghdad said five soldiers were injured.Two helicopters were flying when the second one in the formation was hit by a projectile, believed to be a rocket propelled grenade, witnesses said. An AP reporter at a U.S. base several hundred yards away saw the striken aircraft spin out of control in the air then fall to the ground. The downed craft could later be seen, engulfed in flames and lying amid brush in a field as a plume of thick black smoke rose into the sky. The second copter hovered overhead. It was the second time a U.S. helicopter has been downed by hostile fire since President Bush (news - web sites) declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1. The last copter to be shot down was in June. "A helicopter did go down," Capt. Jefferson Wolfe, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, said. "We can confirm it. It was a Black Hawk. We are investigating." n Baghdad, the U.S. military command said the five people on board were injured but were "safely evacuated." The command did not say why the helicopter went down but added that after it crashed it received ground fire. An injured person was seen being removed from the site on a stretcher. Black Hawks ordinarily have a crew of three and can carry an additional 11 passengers. The downing came at a time when U.S. officials have been warning that thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles remain unaccounted for after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)âs regime and pose a threat to U.S. military aircraft. RPGs, also fired with a shoulder device, are a weapon frequently used by insurgents for ambushes on American forces. Tikrit, the hometown of ousted leader Saddam Hussein, lies in the heart of the "Sunni Triangle," the region of central Iraq north of Baghdad that has seen mutliple attacks every day against U.S. forces. The region is where Saddam drew his strongest support, and his loyalists are now believed to be leading resistance to the U.S.-led occupation. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, on a three-day tour of Iraq, was in Tikrit earlier Saturday visiting the main U.S. garrison there. He left the city hours before the helicopter was shot down and was in the northern city of Kirkuk, U.S. officials said. . . . Time to take off the farking gloves and treat Tikrit (and its people) as HOSTILE. Posted by: CrazyFool 2003-10-25 |
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