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Downed chopper: 1 dead, 20 hurt
02/11/2003 10:48 - (SA)
Baghdad - One US soldier died and at least 20 others were injured when a US Chinook helicopter was shot down near Baghdad on Sunday.
The helicopter was shot down by an "unknown weapon" as it headed to Baghdad's international airport, a coalition spokesman said.
He said at least 20 people out of the 32 on board were injured.
Military officials said the shooting occurred near Fallujah, a flashpoint town 50km west of Baghdad. The chopper was travelling with another Chinook that carried 25 people.
It was the third time since the United States declared an end to major hostilities on May 1 that the coalition has reported a helicopter being hit by anti-US forces. The previous two strikes did not cause any fatalities.
The latest attack came in the wake of a warning on Friday by the US State Department of "credible information that terrorists have targeted civil aviation in Iraq."
On Thursday, the consular office in Baghdad issued a terse one-sentence statement on the subject.
"Coalition forces have reported possible missile attacks directed at aircraft over the past few weeks," it said.
The bold strike against US forces also came one day after the US military commander in Iraq played down spiraling violence in the blood-soaked country.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, insisted there was "stability and security across great parts of this country."
Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, he dismissed what he called "a strategically and operationally insignificant surge of attacks".
The attack further coincided with widespread rumors in Baghdad of "a day of resistance" over the weekend.
At the same time, the US-led coalition vowed to speed up the handover of authority to the Iraqi people and give the Iraqi police and defence forces a central role in securing the country.
The coalition said this was key to restoring security to Iraq and played down a recent surge in violence, but admitted the attacks would remain a hurdle on the road to rebuilding the country.
The top US civilian in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said that expediting the training of Iraqi security forces was crucial to the campaign to root out Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign fighters blamed for the post-war violence.
"On the security front we will accelerate the turnover of responsibility and authority to Iraqis," Bremer said at a joint news conference with Sanchez.
He promised to "double the size of the Iraqi civil defense corps by March" and to complete the core training of the Iraqi army and a professional Iraqi police force within one year, instead of the two years initially planned.
"We will expand the number of Iraqis engaged in guarding the country's borders and infrastructure. In all, we will have over 200 000 Iraqis involved in their own security forces by September next year," he said.
- AFP
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