BAGHDAD, 26 October 2003 — Five US soldiers were wounded yesterday when their helicopter crashed after coming under fire as US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz hailed US efforts to build a strong Iraqi security force in a country still plagued with bloodshed.
After donor nations pledged $33 billion to rebuild Iraq, the focus shifted back to the war-torn country, where the US troop death toll is mounting and innocent Iraqi civilians are increasingly the target of attack.
A military spokesperson in Baghdad said a Blackhawk military helicopter had come under rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack before it crashed.
“A helicopter did go down in Tikrit. I do not know if it was a controlled landing. Five people were wounded. It was an RPG attack,” the spokesperson said.
But the 4th Infantry Division, based in Tikrit, refused to confirm if the helicopter had been hit by enemy fire.
“At 3:45 p.m. (1245 GMT) today, a helicopter went down beside the Tigris River and caught fire,” said Maj. Gordon Tate in Tikrit.
The helicopter was seen trailing smoke minutes after a loud explosion rocked the area. It quickly lost altitude, crash-landed and was then engulfed in flames.
Earlier, 11 members of a Kurdish tae kwondo team were ambushed on their way back from a tournament in Baghdad when unknown gunmen opened fire on their bus south of Kirkuk, the head of the Kurdistan Olympic Club, Harbi Khaled, told reporters. Three of the men were seriously wounded.
Several attacks were also carried out around Kirkuk yesterday morning. Four blasts shook a US military convoy in what police Maj. Mohammed Salah described as a mortar attack. US forces returned fire, but it was not clear if there were casualties, he added.
A bomb also exploded outside Kirkuk province’s main government office, while police found an arms cache inside an amusement park adjoining a police station, Salah said. In Baghdad, three US soldiers were wounded in an improvised explosives attack yesterday morning, a military spokesman said.
In a guerrilla assault on US troops near Fallujah, two Iraqis were killed and a US civilian seriously wounded when American soldiers opened fire in the aftermath of a roadside bomb blast near their Humvee, doctors and witnesses said.
A translator was burned beyond all recognition, a bodyguard killed and their employer, a US engineer, was seriously wounded, when the vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by bullets and burst into flames, said a survivor of the attack.
Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, an arch-hawk and key advocate of the war against Saddam Hussein, visited the ousted leader’s hometown yesterday on the second day of a four-day tour of Iraq, where the US postwar death toll has risen to 108.
He praised American efforts to stand up an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), telling reporters at a US base in Tikrit: “These young Iraqis are stepping forward to fight for their country along with us. It is a wonderful success story that speaks volumes.”
Five US soldiers were wounded, two of them seriously, in a bomb blast and shootout yesterday evening in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, witnesses said. “At 7:15 p.m. (1615 GMT), a bomb exploded as a five-vehicle US convoy passed through Khaldiya,” Yasser Hamadan, 42, said.
Immediately after the explosion, four rocket-propelled grenades were fired on the convoy, and the soldiers and their attackers traded fire, said Muwaffaq Salem, 38. Five solders were injured and two of their vehicles totally destroyed, the witnesses said.
Two US soldiers were wounded yesterday in a roadside bombing against their convoy in the town of Baqubah.
