U.S. Soldier Is Killed as Helicopter Is Shot Down in Iraq

January 3, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 2 — Insurgents shot down an American military helicopter near Falluja on Friday, killing one crewman, and angry protesters gathered outside one of Baghdad's principal Sunni Muslim mosques to protest a raid in which American troops arrested a prominent Sunni cleric and 31 others, as well as seizing what they described as a large cache of weapons and bomb-making equipment.

The attack on the helicopter near Falluja, the city 35 miles west of Baghdad that has been the scene of relentless violence against the Americans, was the first time insurgents had succeeded in destroying a helicopter since a rash of downings in November. Those attacks destroyed four helicopters and killed more than 40 soldiers, contributing to a death toll that month of 81.

The downed helicopter was an OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, a small, highly maneuverable machine prized by its crews as a sort of aerial motorcycle. It is the first time enemy fire has brought down what the Army has come to regard as its helicopter of choice in Iraq.

The United States command in Iraq has pressed the Kiowas hard to cover convoys, armed raids and surveillance missions, posing a hard test for machines that have had a history of mechanical problems. But Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the American command in Baghdad, said preliminary investigations of the helicopter's burned-out wreckage indicated that it had been brought down by unspecified "enemy fire."

Iraqi villagers said American ground troops in search of hidden weapons arrived about 8 a.m. in an area south of Falluja they have nicknamed Death Square for the many attacks on troops there.

Several Kiowas were flying cover for the American troops, Iraqi witnesses said, when something struck one of the craft at about noon, causing it to explode. One man, Mundher Muhammad, said the rotors continued to turn as the craft broke in two and plunged into the fields, hitting a tree and a power line. One crewman died instantly; the other was seriously wounded, the American command said.

A controversy erupted later when American troops opened fire on what General Kimmitt described as insurgents "wearing black jackets with `Press' clearly written in English." The general said the men had arrived in two Mercedes cars, one black, the other dark blue.

"The enemy personnel fired upon U.S. forces with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades," he said. "One of the Mercedes was tracked to a nearby house," he said, adding that four people had been captured.

It was not clear how the general's description fit with an account by the Reuters news agency that said four Iraqi members of its staff traveling in a black Mercedes had been fired on by the Americans and arrested when they arrived at the scene to cover the downing.

Some other reporters who were present said American troops guarding the wreckage had opened fire without warning on the Reuters staff members, possibly after the troops had taken fire from insurgents using the reporters for cover.

In the raid in Baghdad on Thursday that led to the arrests of the Iraqis, many of them Muslim clerics, American troops operating behind an advance party of Iraqi civil defense and police units stormed into the Ibn Taimiya mosque at midmorning, when the clerics were meeting in what they described as a religious council. The mosque is a stronghold of the Salafist school of Islam, a hard-line, back-to-basics sect that includes Osama bin Laden among its proselytizers.

The United States military command has said often that its policy is to avoid entering mosques whenever possible, so as not to inflame religious feelings. But the raid set off a firestorm among the Sunni Muslims who have been Saddam Hussein's strongest supporters and the fount of the insurgency. After the 1 p.m. prayers on Friday, clerics led a large crowd of worshipers into the mosque's courtyard for choruses of contempt for America and denunciations of American troops they accused of tearing up Korans, smashing wooden doors in the sanctuary and otherwise "desecrating" Islam The American command denied the allegations.

The raid fit the recent pattern of intensive pre-emptive strikes against the insurgents. Since the capture of Mr. Hussein on Dec. 13, there has been a lower level of attacks on American forces, down to an average of about 20 a day from about 50 a day in November, American commanders say. But they have warned that the insurgents have the ability to intensify the attacks again.

In the protest at the Baghdad mosque on Friday, the air filled with shouts of "Down, down America!" and "Jihad, jihad, our way is jihad!" meaning holy war, as well as incantations in praise of martyrdom. The prayer leader, Imam Abdul-Sattar al-Janabi, used a bullhorn to protest against the Americans for the raid on Thursday, especially for the arrest of the mosque's senior cleric, Imam Mahdi al-Sumaydai. General Kimmitt said the arrested men included four foreigners, but he gave no details.

"America is the enemy of God!" Imam Abdul-Sattar said. "We ask the occupation forces to leave this country."

But General Kimmitt, the spokesman for the American command, said at a news briefing that the command had "numerous reports from local Iraqis that pointed to the mosque as being used for criminal and terrorist activities." He added that "the mosque is believed to have been a hub of anticoalition and anti-Iraqi activities, with various cells using the mosque as a meeting location and weapons cache," under the direction of Imam Mahdi.

General Kimmitt listed the bomb-making equipment, weapons and ammunition he said had been seized at the mosque. The list included explosives of a kind used in suicide attacks and roadside bombings. It also included weapons, parts of weapons, and ammunition that have formed the insurgents' basic armory for ambushes: packages of high explosive, a detonator cord and batteries, detonators and propellants for bombs; a handbook for a Soviet-made SA-7 ground-to-air missile; Kalashnikov rifles, boxes of ammunition for the rifles; mortars, artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenade launchers; and batteries and propellants for bomb-making.

"Because of the sensitivity of the religious monuments inside this country, we are very, very careful that we don't go in indiscriminately, or without a significant amount of intelligence," the general said. "But I think the results of what we found inside definitely demonstrated that this mosque was being used for purposes other than free religious expression."

The attacks on American troops on Friday included an ambush of a fuel tanker convoy. The vehicles were headed toward Baghdad from Jordan when they were hit by a roadside bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade and automatic rifle fire just east of Ramadi, the city that marks the western flank of the Sunni Triangle. A 5,000-gallon fuel tanker exploded in flames, and three American soldiers were wounded, one only lightly.

In another attack on Friday, the American command said a Humvee driven by soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division's Second Brigade was hit by a roadside bomb, and possibly small-arms fire, on the outskirts of Baghdad. The command said the Humvee, the most attacked of American military vehicles in Iraq, usually with little or no armor to protect crews of up to six men, rolled on top of "at least one of the soldiers." A command spokesman added, "We have some casualties associated with that," but gave no details.

Edward Wong, in Baghdad, Neela Banerjee, in Falluja, and Eric Schmitt, in Kuwait, contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company