US military use first ever drone aircraft to fight in Iraq

The US military brought a new weapon into the fight in Iraq, announcing the Army’s first-ever use of a drone aircraft to kill enemy fighters in Iraq.

The Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, dropped a precision bomb on two suspected insurgents believed to be preparing to plant roadside bombs on September 1, the military said. The drone was called in for the attack near Qarraya, 180 miles north-west of Baghdad, after a scout team from the 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, observed the insurgents at work.

“This accomplishment adds a precise and discriminate means for our Army to successfully engage the enemy in counterinsurgency warfare,” Colonel A.T. Ball, commander of the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, said in a statement.

In violence today, a bomb went off midday at a crowded market in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, killing four and injuring five, said Khalil al-Yasiri, a health official in the neighbouring city of Najaf.

“I was shopping with my child Ameer, when a big explosion went off in front of us, and I was injured in my two legs,” said Salah Mihsin, 35, as he lay in his Najaf hospital bed. “I still don’t know the fate of my child.”

Gunmen in Najaf also killed Mohammed al-Qarawi, director of tribal affairs in anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s office. The local police commander Major General Abdul-Karim al-Mayahi said the attack occurred on Friday on the road between Kufa and Najaf.

A mortar shell hit a house in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Baladiyat in eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding three, police said.

Though sectarian violence has been down in recent weeks, the attacks reinforced the obstacles to US goals ahead of a report to Congress by the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker. The two are to attending hearings starting on Monday on progress in Iraq since the introduction of 30,000 more American troops, including whether advances are being made toward national reconciliation amid improved security conditions.