Gość: A.D.
IP: *.mco.bellsouth.net
26.10.03, 00:02
>> Wojna kosztuje. W ramach uczczenia wizytujacego Irak zyda - Wolfowitza,
Irakijczycy zestrzelili helikopter...
>www.rense.com/general43/onsad.htm
Iraqis Shoot Down Black
Hawk - One Said Wounded
By Damir Sagolj
10-25-3
TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at
a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter which came down near Saddam Hussein's hometown
of Tikrit on Saturday, wounding one American soldier.
Initial reports had said five soldiers were wounded.
As the aircraft blazed on the ground within sight of a major U.S. base,
soldiers told a Reuters photographer at the scene that a rocket-propelled
grenade (RPG) hit it in the air. But a U.S. military spokeswoman in Baghdad
said it was unclear what brought it down, only that RPGs were fired on the
wreck.
"After the aircraft was on the ground, it was attacked with RPGs," she said,
saying it was "presently not known" what brought the Black Hawk down.
She said only one soldier was wounded among the crew of five who were
rescued by a second helicopter from green, low-lying farmland about three km
(two miles) east of the U.S. military base.
Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj heard a loud bang before the helicopter
fell from the sky.
Rocket attacks are a daily fact of life for the U.S. forces on the ground.
But there has been only one report of hostile fire bringing down aircraft
since major combat was declared over on May 1, despite American fears about
the availability of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of
Washington's campaign against Saddam, had left the Tikrit base by helicopter
for Kirkuk in the north just hours earlier, after visiting troops engaged in
one of the main hotspots of Iraqi resistance to the occupation forces.
Visiting Iraq for the second time in three months, Wolfowitz stressed the
importance of speeding up the formation of a new Iraqi army, police force,
border guard and civil defense corps.
He also questioned why the Iraqi civil defense corps is projected to have
22,000 personnel instead of 100,000.
Tikrit is around 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, near the apex of
the "Sunni Triangle" north and west of the capital where many of Saddam's
fellow Sunni Muslims, fearful of power going to the Shi'ite majority, have
opposed U.S. occupiers.
The Black Hawk is the U.S. Army's front-line utility helicopter, designed to
carry 11 combat-ready assault troops and is also used for medical
evacuations.
