Iraq: US vows to fight back
2003-11-03 15:41
Al-Buisa, Iraq - US troops scoured through the wreckage on Monday of the downed helicopter in which 15 of their comrades died as the coalition vowed to fight back after the deadliest single attack on its forces since they entered Iraq.
Some 20 trucks, ambulances and bulldozers drew up at the crash site about 10:20 and began searching for evidence of what downed the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter on Sunday just outside the town of Fallujah, a bastion of anti-coalition activity.
Despite US efforts to downplay the rising number of attacks, the crash of the Chinook came amid a surge in violence which has claimed the lives of at least 42 Iraqis and 28 coalition soldiers and other personnel in the last eight days.
US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld speculated the chopper was downed by a surface-to-air missile.
Two witnesses said they saw what looked like two missiles fired on the Chinook and a second chopper, with only one of them hitting the tail of the ill-fated twin-rotor helicopter.
Villagers around the crash site in al-Buisa appeared happy on Monday.
"It's party time for us," said farmer Ahmad al-Issawi. "If the resistance carries on like this, the Americans will leave Iraq."
Hundreds of the portable missiles, mainly Russian-made SAM-7s, are said to be scattered around the country, available to insurgents from poorly guarded arms depots that are a legacy of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The weapons depots are a goldmine for the combattants as they look to make cheap and easy bombs, salvaging explosives and tank shells, that have slowly bled the US forces with daily attacks on military convoys.
In Fallujah, residents said US troops detained 10 men from their homes before dawn but it was not clear if there was any connection to the attack on the chopper.
On top of the downed Chinook, a US soldier was killed on Sunday in a bombing in Baghdad, and two American contractors working with the US Army Corps of Engineers were also killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah.
The latest deaths raised to 138 the number of US troops lost in Iraq since May 1, when Washington declared major combat over, according to an AFP count based on a previous toll provided by the Pentagon.
US overseer Paul Bremer swore the coalition would persevere despite the insurgents' mounting attacks and increasingly effective tactics.
"We are not going to be deterred," Bremer told CNN on Sunday.
Bremer also hit out at neighboring Syria for allegedly letting foreign fighters from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group slip into Iraq.
Veterans of Saddam Hussein's security services and foreign fighters are suspected of teaming up in last Monday's suicide bombing spree in Baghdad that gutted the offices of the international Red Cross and four police stations.
The bloodshed which began on October 26 with a rocket bombardment on the hotel inside the coalition's citadel-like Baghdad compound where Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz was staying, has deflated the momentum for reconstruction efforts.
Both the Red Cross and the UN have pulled foreign staff, further reducing the ranks of humanitarian and international agencies in Iraq.
Meanwhile, one Iraqi civilian was killed and 15 wounded Monday in an explosives attack targeting a local official from the Diyala province who escaped unharmed, hospital and police sources said.
In a separate incident, an Iraqi civilian was killed and eight others wounded on Sunday in Kirkuk, as six mortars fell on residential sectors, some near US army forces, police said.
Oil-rich Kirkuk has also become an active front in the war between the US military and insurgents since Saddam's fall, with attacks mostly targeting US bases and oil pipelines.