Search on for 2 army pilots in Iraq crash ( 2004-01-26 13:26) (Agencies)
A U.S. helicopter crashed in
the Tigris river while searching for a missing soldier on Sunday, and the
aircraft's two crew members were missing, the military said.
It did not say what caused the crash of the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter,
attached to the 101st Airborne Division.
The helicopter was searching for a soldier missing when the boat he was in
capsized earlier Sunday while on patrol. The other three soldiers in boat were
safe, but two Iraqi police officers and an Iraqi translator were confirmed
killed in the incident, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th
Infantry Division.
She said the search for the two pilots was underway. U.S. troops and Iraqi
police sealed off the area and established checkpoints to secure the search and
rescue operation.
U.S. troops rushing to the scene came under "limited and ineffective small
arms fire," the spokeswoman said. An Iraqi policeman manning one of the
checkpoints was killed in a drive-by shooting, witnesses said.
It was the fifth helicopter crash in Iraq this month — three of them due to
hostile fire.
U.S. troops arrested nearly 50 people Sunday in raids in the Sunni Triangle
after attacks in the volatile region killed six American soldiers.
Most of the arrests occurred in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where
46 people were detained in a series of raids, the U.S. military said. Three were
arrested for alleged anti-coalition activities and the rest for illegal weapons
possession.
Soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division also seized 220 hand grenades in a raid
on a house in the town of Mukayshifa, located south of Saddam Hussein's hometown
Tikrit, according to spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle.
The raids in the Sunni heartland followed a series of bombings and attacks
Saturday in which six soldiers were killed. One of them, from the 4th Infantry
Division, died Sunday of wounds suffered when insurgents fired a rocket
propelled grenade at his Bradley vehicle in Beiji on Saturday.
Five other U.S. soldiers were killed in two separate bombings Saturday in
Khaldiyah and Fallujah, both located in the Euphrates River valley west of the
capital. A blast Saturday in Samarra to the north of Baghdad narrowly missed an
American convoy but killed four Iraqis and wounded about 40 others, including
seven Americans.
A roadside bomb exploded Sunday near a U.S. patrol in Baghdad, but a U.S.
soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were no U.S. casualties.
The latest deaths raised to 513 the number of U.S. service members who have
died since the United States and its allies launched the Iraq war March 20. Most
of the deaths have occurred in the insurgency by Saddam Hussein loyalists since
U.S. President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.
The Bush administration launched the war, claiming Saddam had violated U.N.
resolutions requiring Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.
Nine months after the collapse of Saddam's regime, no such weapons have been
found. On Sunday, David Kay, the former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said
he believes Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led
invasion. Kay said the challenge for the United States now is to figure out why
intelligence indicated that the Iraqi president did have them.
"We led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons," Kay said on
the National Public Radio program "Weekend Edition." "The fact that we found so
far the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and
understand why."
The Bush administration is now embroiled in a political dispute with the
country's powerful Shiite Muslim clergy over the blueprint for returning
sovereignty to the Iraqis by July 1. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani
wants members of a new legislature chosen by the voters, rather than selected in
regional caucuses as the United States plans.
U.S. officials say the continuing violence and the absence of an electoral
roll or a census make it impossible to hold early elections. However, the United
States cannot afford to offend the Shiite leadership, because Shiites are
estimated to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people.
Muwafaq al-Rubaei, a Shiite member of the U.S.-installed Governing Council,
told reporters Sunday following a meeting with al-Sistani that the ayatollah is
sticking to his demand for elections and believes they can be held before July
1.
"The clerics' opinion is the opinion of the Iraqi people in general,"
al-Rubaei said. "The constitution shall be written by Iraqis elected by Iraqis
and not by foreigners. Al-Sistani's call is still in place to hold elections."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to announce this week
whether to send a team to Iraq to assess if early polls are possible. Washington
hopes that the involvement of the United Nations will help break the
deadlock and satisfy the Shiites.
