Hunt underway for missing helicopter crew
A search is underway today for two crew members of a US helicopter that crashed in Iraq’s Tigris river while searching for a missing soldier, the US 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 yesterday while on patrol.
The other three soldiers in the boat were safe, but two Iraqi police officers and an Iraqi translator were confirmed killed in the incident, said Major Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division.
She said the search for the two pilots was underway. US troops and Iraqi police sealed off the area and established checkpoints to secure the search and rescue operation.
US 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.
US troops arrested nearly 50 people yesterday in raids in the Sunni Triangle after attacks in the volatile region killed six soldiers.
Most of the arrests occurred in Baqouba, 35 miles north east of Baghdad, where 46 people were detained in a series of raids, the US 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 Major Aberle.
The raids in the Sunni heartland followed a series of bombings and attacks on Saturday in which six soldiers were killed. One of them, from the 4th Infantry Division, died yesterday of wounds suffered when insurgents fired a rocket propelled grenade at his Bradley vehicle in Beiji.
A roadside bomb exploded Sunday near a US patrol in Baghdad but there were no US casualties.
The latest deaths raised to 513 the number of US service members who have died since the coalition launched the Iraq war on March 20.
Most of the deaths have occurred in the insurgency by Saddam Hussein loyalists since US President George W Bush declared an end to active combat on May 1.
