The U.S. military has captured at least two suspects in the recent spate of helicopter downings in Iraq, the No. 2 American commander there said Thursday.Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno also said the military has noted similarities in some of the eight helicopter incidents in the past month in which aircraft were either shot down or landed under fire. A few of them might have been ambushed, he said. Odierno declined to say what other similarities there might have been in tactics and techniques used, but said officials are studying them closely to try to better protect the aircraft and capture militants from the cells involved, which he said he believes are "al-Qaida-associated cells."
Odierno said he doesn't think the spate of downings - and two incidents of chlorine bombs this week - signal a more capable insurgency. "What they're trying to do is ... adapt in such ways where they can continue to create instability," Odierno told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Baghdad.
Odierno said that in two or three of the helicopter cases it appeared "there were probably some sort of ambush sites that were set up by some of our foes." Odierno said that one man, detained about a week ago, "has admitted that he was involved in one of" the downings and that the military is investigating. "And we've done a couple operations over the last few nights, and I think we've also gone into another part of the cell (that) might have shot down another aircraft," he said. "I'm not going to comment anymore on the two people we captured because ... we're still working those issues."
It was unclear whether he was referring to the two captured altogether or two in the most recent operations. Defense Department officials said they couldn't immediately clarify the numbers.