BAGHDAD, 22 April 2005 — Insurgents downed a Bulgarian helicopter with a missile strike yesterday, killing all 11 occupants, as foreign security workers found themselves increasingly caught in the firing line of attacks in Iraq.
The attack, believed to be the first downing of a civilian aircraft in Iraq, comes amid a surge in violence and puts further pressure on leaders struggling to form a government nearly three months after elections. President Jalal Talabani said that a Cabinet list could be expected soon but added that there were still differences between the would-be government partners on the allocation of some Cabinet posts.
The MI-8 helicopter was flying near the town of Tarmiya, north of Baghdad, when it was hit by ground fire, possibly by a rocket-propelled grenade, the military sources said.
A US Embassy spokesman said 11 people were killed in the Bulgarian helicopter crash, among them six Americans, three Bulgarians and two people identified as Filipinos by the Bulgarian Defense Ministry in Sofia.
The six US citizens worked for Blackwater Security Consulting, which provides security for the embassy and other clients, the spokesman said.
Talabani, meanwhile, vowed there would be no amnesty for the killers of Iraqis after the discovery of 60 corpses found in an Iraqi river, which he said were of Shiite hostages seized in a kidnap drama so far shrouded in mystery.
The latest attacks brought to at least 10 the number of foreign security specialists killed in Iraq over the last two days.
Earlier yesterday, one employee from the British-based Aegis defense services company was killed and another injured when a bomb exploded as their car headed from the capital toward the airport, company spokeswoman Sarah Pearson said.
One Iraqi civilian, traveling in another car, was also hurt by the blast, according to an Interior Ministry official.
In other developments, US troops shot and killed an Iraqi woman they said had set off a roadside bomb under a military convoy, wounding one soldier near Ramadi.
And militants loyal to Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi yesterday in an Internet statement claimed responsibility for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on Wednesday. A car bomb targeting Allawi’s motorcade killed two policemen. This was the fifth attempt on the prime minister’s life.
Talabani suggested the bodies fished out of the Tigris River were those of Shiite hostages recently seized by Sunni insurgents in Madain, a few miles upstream. He vowed in an address to the nation that there would be no pardon for insurgents whose hands were “stained with the blood of Iraqi people”.
— With input from agencies
