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thedrifter
12-04-06, 09:48 AM
December 04, 2006
Helo crash leaves Marine dead, 3 missing

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD — A Marine helicopter carrying 16 people made an emergency landing in a lake in a volatile province west of Baghdad, killing one and leaving three missing, the military said Monday.

Twelve passengers survived the crash Sunday in Anbar province, according to a statement. The military said a Marine was pulled from the water, but attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, while three other service members were listed as “duty status unknown.”

The military said the incident did not appear to be due to enemy action but was still being investigated.

Ellie

thedrifter
12-04-06, 11:24 AM
Helicopter crash in Iraq kills 4 Marines

By QAIS AL-BASHIR, Associated Press Writer

A U.S. helicopter carrying 16 Marines went down in a lake west of the Iraqi capital in volatile Anbar province, killing four of them, the military said Monday.

The twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter from 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing made the emergency landing Sunday near the shore of Lake Qadisiyah "in which the pilots maintained control of the aircraft the entire time."

It said the helicopter had experienced mechanical problems and was not hit by gunfire.

Twelve passengers survived the crash; a Marine was pulled from the water but attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful. A search was then conducted for three missing Marines whose bodies were found, the military said.

The crash occurred in Anbar province, where many of Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgent groups are based and where many U.S. Marines die in battles with the militants.

Ellie

thedrifter
12-04-06, 07:38 PM
Helicopter plunges into a lake in Anbar province, killing four Marines

BAGHDAD (AP) — Four U.S. Marines were killed when a Sea Knight helicopter plunged into a lake in volatile Anbar province, the military said Monday, raising to 13 the number of American troops killed in a particularly bloody weekend in Iraq.

It was the second military aircraft to go down in a week in Anbar, a Sunni Muslim province rife with insurgents, although the command said mechanical problems had forced an emergency landing on Sunday and the twin-rotor helicopter from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing was not hit by gunfire.

"The pilots maintained control of the aircraft the entire time," the military said.

A Marine was pulled from the water but attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, and the bodies of three missing Marines were found in a subsequent search, the military said, adding the 12 other passengers survived.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, declined to give further details about the state of the aircraft or its mission, saying the incident was still under investigation.

The CH-46 helicopter has the ability to land and taxi in the water in case of emergency.

The deaths came on a weekend in which nine other U.S. troops were killed, including five in Anbar and pushing the total number of American service members who have died since the war started in March 2003 to at least 2,901.

A U.S. fighter jet also crashed last week in a field, killing the Air Force pilot.

Iraqi state TV, meanwhile, reported that Iraqi police found half a ton of explosives, including suicide belts and roadside bombs in Anbar — a province the size of North Carolina that stretches west from Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The high number of U.S. casualties as well as a recent spike in brutal retaliatory attacks between Shiites and Sunnis have contributed to widespread dissatisfaction with the war that was considered a major factor in the U.S. Democratic congressional victory.

U.S. President George W. Bush told one of Iraq's leading Shiite politicians, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, in a White House meeting on Monday that the United States was not satisfied with the progress of efforts to stop the sharp escalation of violence in Iraq.

"I assured him that the U.S. supports his work and the work of the prime minister to unify the country," Bush said, referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "Part of unifying Iraq is for the elected leaders and society leaders to reject the extremists that are trying to stop the advance of this young democracy."

The president is under pressure to decide a new blueprint for U.S. involvement in Iraq. A bipartisan commission headed by James A. Baker III, a former Republican U.S. secretary of state and Bush family friend from Texas, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana is to present its recommendations to Bush on Wednesday.

The group is expected to recommend gradually phasing out the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq from combat to training and supporting Iraqi units, with a goal of pulling back American combat troops by early 2008.

Violence was unrelenting on Monday, with at least 13 people killed in attacks nationwide, including Nabil Ibrahim al-Dulaimi, a 36-year-old Sunni news editor with the private, independent Dijlah radio station who was gunned down in his car on his way to work.

Al-Dulaimi's slaying raised to at least 93 the number of journalists who have been killed in Iraq since the Iraq war began, according the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

Police also found 55 bodies, including 48 that were handcuffed, blindfolded and shot before they were dumped in two different areas of Baghdad — 18 on the Sunni-dominated western bank of the Tigris River and 30 on the eastern side, which is largely Shiite.

It was a grisly example of the rising sectarian divisions that led U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to declare on Sunday that Iraq is suffering a civil war that is even deadlier than that which decimated Lebanon in 1975-1990.

America's top two officials in Iraq — Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the top American military commander in Iraq — issued a statement denouncing the recent surge of violence in the capital.

"We condemn in the strongest language the recent car bombings, attacks and retribution killings by extremists against peaceful Iraqis in Baghdad," they said. "We implore all Iraqis not to become pawns of those who seek to destroy you and your country. Do not allow yourself to be drawn down the road of senseless brutality by striking back."

Bush and al-Hakim spoke for more than an hour, four days after the U.S. president met with the Iraqi prime minister in Amman, Jordan.

Al-Hakim said that he "vehemently" opposes any regional or international effort to solve Iraq's problems that goes around the unity government in Baghdad.

"Iraq should be in a position to solve Iraq's problems," al-Hakim said.

In northern Baghdad, American forces killed two insurgents and detained six during a raid on buildings where insurgents with ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq were making car bombs, the U.S. command said. A weapons cache including artillery rounds and AK-47s also was found.

In northern Iraq, near the refinery city of Beiji, an Iraqi soldier opened fire on protesters who tried to break through a coalition checkpoint Monday, wounding three of them, said Iraqi army Lt. Hassan Mohammed.

The shooting occurred after several hundred protesters marched from Beiji to the checkpoint in nearby Siniyah village where a convoy of trucks carrying food apparently had been stopped. As a U.S. military helicopter circled overhead, shots rang out and the demonstrators ran away.

Elsewhere, police said a blast at the Sunni Nidaa Allah Mosque in northern Baghdad caused its dome to collapse on Sunday, although no injuries were reported. It was a Feb. 22 bombing that destroyed the golden dome in Samarra, north of the capital, that sparked the series of retaliatory attacks between Shiites and Sunnis plaguing the country.

Ellie