US GI dies as copter shot down in Iraq ( 2004-01-03 09:15) (Agencies)
Insurgents shot down a U.S.
helicopter west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier, and U.S. forces said
they came under fire with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades as they
guarded the burning aircraft.
Iraqi Civil Defense
Corps (ICDC) members cover their faces with scarves, during a joint patrol
with U.S. Army soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division in Saddam Hussein's
hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, Friday, Jan 2, 2004. Some ICDC
members cover their faces for fear of being recognized, and targeted by
insurgents attacking Americans and their Iraqi allies. [AP]
The military said the attackers who fired at U.S.
forces after the crash near Fallujah were posing as journalists. But there was
confusion over the claim, since the Reuters news agency reported that U.S.
troops fired at its journalists at the scene and later detained three.
Elsewhere, Arab gunmen shot and killed a Kurd amid rising ethnic tensions in
the northern, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and a Baath party official was
assassinated in an apparent revenge killing in Mosul. An American tanker truck
was set ablaze in western Iraq, and coalition forces raiding a Baghdad mosque
arrested 32 suspected insurgents and seized an arms cache.
U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said enemy fire likely downed the OH-58
Kiowa Warrior that crashed near Fallujah, a flashpoint in the insurgency.
Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division "are fairly convinced that it was enemy
fire," said Kimmitt, who was in Baghdad.
Soon after, five men "wearing black press jackets with 'press' clearly
written in English" fired on U.S. paratroopers guarding the crash site, Kimmitt
said. He said it was the first time he had heard of assailants in Iraq posing as
journalists.
Reuters said a team led by Iraqi cameraman Salem Uraiby was filming the crash
scene from a checkpoint using a camera on a tripod and was wearing a flak jacket
marked "press."
"We were fired on and we drove away at high speed," driver Alaa Noury said.
He said a second car driven by another Iraqi journalist had been fired upon in
the same incident. One of the cars remained in Fallujah, Reuters said.
Kimmitt said attackers in two cars fled the scene and that soldiers doing a
sweep through the town, with helicopters circling overhead, tracked down one of
the cars and arrested four "enemy personnel."
If attackers are indeed posing as reporters, genuine journalists could be in
danger, said Robert Menard, secretary general of the Paris-based media freedom
group Reporters Without Borders.
He urged the military to respond by reminding its troops to exercise caution
and ensure that reporters are not targeted.
"If this is correct, it's terribly dangerous for journalists, because it will
mean that one could imagine that a fighter is behind every journalist," Menard
said in a telephone interview.
Ann Cooper, executive director of Committee to Protect Journalists, echoed
those remarks.
"It greatly increases the risks for the journalists working there, and Iraq
is already an extremely dangerous place," she said. "We need the journalists
there to be able to cover the news. If actions like this blur their status as
neutral observers, that's very serious."
Rebels have previously shot at and brought down U.S. helicopters elsewhere in
the so-called "Sunni Triangle," the heartland of Saddam Hussein (news - web
sites)'s support and a center of resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.
In the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces since the Iraq invasion began
in March, 17 soldiers were killed on Nov. 15 when two Black Hawk helicopters
collided above Mosul in what the military called a likely grenade attack.
Late Friday, explosions boomed in Baghdad from U.S. military bombing on the
southern edge of the capital. A spokesman said the bombing was part of Operation
Iron Grip, a campaign to target insurgents who have launched rockets and mortar
shells.
Residents of the outlying neighborhood of Doura said it appeared U.S. fire
was targeting fields there. Bordered by date palm farms, Doura includes the
homes of former officials of Saddam's government and a palace now used as a U.S.
military base.
Earlier, people protested outside Baghdad's Ibn Taymiyyah mosque Friday after
U.S. soldiers and Iraqi defense force officers raided the mosque overnight.
Kimmitt said troops seized explosives, guns and ammunition and arrested 32
people believed to be non-Iraqi Arabs "based on their dialect." The military
says foreign Islamic militants opposed to the occupation have infiltrated from
neighboring borders.
In the northern city of Mosul, a minor Baath Party official and
Saddam-appointed dean of political science of Mosul University, Adel Jabar Abid
Mustafa, was found dead Thursday with two gunshots to his head, according to his
brother.
Gunmen in Mosul have killed at least three judges appointed by Saddam's
regime, as well as officers in a new Iraqi police force formed by the U.S.-led
occupation.
Also Friday, a truck traveling toward Baghdad International Airport flipped
on its side, killing one soldier and injuring six others, the military said.
A 5,000-gallon oil tanker erupted in flames near a U.S. military base on the
road to the western town of Ramadi on Friday. The military said the tanker was
in a convoy attacked by a roadside bomb, a grenade and small arms fire. Three
American soldiers suffered burns and shrapnel wounds.
U.S. military commanders say rebel attacks on troops have decreased since
Saddam's capture Dec. 13, but that insurgents may be shifting to civilian
targets. On New Year's Eve, a car bomb destroyed an upscale Baghdad restaurant,
killing eight people.
In raids to hunt down former Saddam officials, U.S. soldiers captured Abu
Mohammed, believed to be moving foreign fighters and cash through a tense area
west of Baghdad, the military said Friday. Based on information gleaned from the
arrest Thursday, the military seized another three suspects and some weapons.
In Kirkuk, Arab gunmen killed one Kurd and wounded another on Thursday night
as they were walking in an Arab neighborhood, Police Chief Gen. Turhan Youssef
said.
Afterward, there was a shootout between Arabs and police, who killed two
attackers and wounded several, said Jalal Jawher, local head of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan party.
