NEAR KARBALA, Iraq, 25 March 2003 — Iraq said yesterday that Iraqi farmers had shot down two US helicopters south of Baghdad and vowed to show the pilots on television, just as it did with other captured and killed soldiers on Sunday. The commander of the US-led invasion of Iraq confirmed the loss of one Apache Longbow helicopter.
“The fate of the crew is uncertain right now. We characterize that crew, two men, as missing in action,” General Tommy Franks told a news briefing at Central Command in Qatar. Iraqi television showed pictures of the downed Apache in a field surrounded by Iraqis waving rifles. The black helicopter, still armed with guided missiles with US markings on them, appeared intact with no sign of having been shot down. Two helmets were shown at the scene but there was no sign of the crew in the television videotape.
Reuters photographer Faleh Kheiber later went to the scene and said the Apache was still loaded with at least two air-to-surface missiles. Eyewitnesses told him it had flown low over palm trees, allowing farmers and soldiers to fire at it.
Franks said the helicopter was one of “between 30 and 40 attacking a particular area”. He denied it had been shot down by farmers but did not say what had forced it out of the air. CNN correspondent Karl Penhaul, accompanying the US Army Fifth Corps 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment, said the unit had been on a nighttime combat mission targeting units of President Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard.
He cited one of the pilots as saying they had run into a “hornet’s nest, a barrage of anti-aircraft fire” near the city of Karbala, 110 km (70 miles) southwest of Baghdad, the closest fighting to the Iraqi capital since the war began last Thursday.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf told a news conference: “Farmers shot down two Apaches. We showed one today and might show the second and the pilots.”
“We are holding several other American and British prisoners and we may show some of them,” he said. “They are supporting the criminals, the Zionist regime, and they are talking about the Geneva Convention, so we will continue showing whichever mercenaries fall into our hands.”
“They show Iraqi civilians and lie to the world and say they are Iraqi soldiers and they are not,” he said. “This is not a double standard...this is despicable.”
Iraqi TV spoke to an Iraqi farmer it said had shot down the Apache. “It was shot down by the rifle of a heroic farmer from Karbala, Ali Obeid Mingash, from the Hindiyah tribe. He is a brave fighter, he is one of the sons of great Iraq,” said the TV correspondent with the farmer standing by him smiling and holding a rifle.
