US helicopter was shot down - soldiers
An Apache helicopter that crash-landed near the northern city of Mosul may have been hit by ground fire while making a low pass over the area, US soldiers said.
A military spokesman insisted that the incident was caused by mechanical failure and that the crew, who were uninjured, reported no ground fire.
But a commander later said that he did not know whether ground fire brought down the copter from the 101st Airborne Division.
The Apache came down near a road 13 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, which has been the site of escalating anti-occupation resistance in recent weeks.
Troops guarding the site where the burned-out wreckage was still smouldering today said the chopper had been hit by enemy fire while flying over the area on patrol at low altitude. They asked not to be identified.
“The helicopter was shot down,” one said.
A military spokesman blamed the incident on mechanical failure, but Brigadier General Frank Helmick of the 101st later said the cause of the crash was unclear.
“We don’t know what happened,” he said. “It could have been a mechanical failure but again, we are looking at all possibilities.”
If it is confirmed that the Apache was brought shot down, it would be the sixth military helicopter downed in six weeks.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s US-appointed interim government established a war crimes tribunal to try former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and possibly Saddam himself in absentia.
The new tribunal will cover crimes committed from July 17, 1968 – the day Saddam’s Baath Party came to power – until May 1, 2003, when US President George Bush declared major combat over, said Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, president of Iraq’s Governing Council.
The tribunal will try cases stemming from mass executions of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, as well as the suppression of uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Muslims after the 1991 Gulf War. Al-Hakim said it would also try cases committed against Iran – with which Iraq fought a bloody 1980-88 war – and against Kuwait, which Iraq invaded in 1990.
