40 minutes ago
By JIM GOMEZ, Associated Press Writer
TIKRIT, Iraq - An Army helicopter crashed Friday into a riverbank near Saddam
Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown of Tikrit, killing six U.S. soldiers, the
military said. It probably was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, an officer said.
Two Americans also were killed in separate attacks Thursday and Friday in the
northern city of Mosul, raising concerns that the insurgency was spreading north.
"Six soldiers were on board and all of them were killed," said Maj. Josslyn
Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division based in Tikrit. They were all
from the 101st Airborne Division, she said.
It was not immediately clear whether the chopper was brought down by hostile
fire or a mechanical failure, a spokeswoman said. But an officer who asked not to be
identified said it was probably hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
White smoke could be seen rising from the crash site as three other helicopters
circled overhead.
Separately, guerrillas attacked a convoy in the eastern part of Mosul, 250 miles
north of Baghdad, with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire Friday morning.
The military said one U.S. soldier died and six others were wounded in the clash.
Three others were injured later in the day when a roadside bomb exploded near
the downtown Mosul Hotel, which is now used as a military barracks, the military said.
A military statement released Friday said that a soldier died the day before near
Mosul when a homemade bomb exploded.
The latest confirmed U.S. military fatalities bring to at least 31 the number of
American troops killed action in the first week of November. Two American civilian
contractors working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a Polish officer also
died in attacks over the past seven days.
The U.S. military said that the number of daily attacks on coalition forces
dropped to 29 last week from a spike of 37 the week before.
The spate of attacks in the past week in Mosul, Iraq (news - web sites)'s
third-largest city, has raised concerns among U.S. military commanders that the
insurgency is spreading into that region from its main stronghold in the so-called
Sunni Triangle, to the west and north of Baghdad.
The city is close to the semiautonomous Kurdish areas that lie between it and
the Turkish border.
In Baghdad, about 500 people marched Friday toward coalition headquarters to
protest the arrest of 36 clerics over the past couple of months.
They chanted Islamic slogans including "America's army will be wiped out," and
"America is the enemy of God." They also carried a large banner reading "Prisons ...
will never terrify us."
Near Karbala, 70 miles south of Baghdad, the Polish brigade serving as part of
the U.S.-led coalition held a memorial service for Maj. Hieronim Kupczyk who was
killed in an ambush Thursday.
It was the first combat death for Poland, which has 2,400 soldiers in Iraq and
is in charge of a large swath of south-central Iraq where about 9,500 soldiers of
several nations help maintain security.
The Pentagon (news - web sites), meanwhile, announced that one of the soldiers
wounded in Sunday's downing of an Army Chinook helicopter died Thursday at a medical
facility in Germany, raising the death toll to 16. Twenty-six others were injured.
In al-Assad, a desert base 155 miles northwest of Baghdad, hundreds of soldiers,
some wearing ceremonial spurs and black regimental hats, assembled late Thursday to
remember their comrades killed in the shootdown, the deadliest single attack against
U.S. forces since the Iraq war began March 20.
Army officials said the helicopter's crew apparently had a last-second warning
of an approaching missile and managed to launch flares designed to draw the
heat-seeking missile away. The defensive measure did not work and the missile slammed
into the right side of the helicopter's rear engine, destroying it and triggering a
fire.
_____
Associated Press correspondents Slobodan Lekic in Baghdad, Mariam Fam in Mosul
and Katarina Kratovac in Karbala contributed to this report.
The Mulindwas Communication Group
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"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
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