U.S. Gunships Target Insurgents in Iraq Amid Copter Crash Inquiry

Automatic weapon fire pounded from helicopter gunships and dozens of rounds of air-launched cannon fire sounded like a clock’s gong in the night Tuesday as the U.S. military conducted operations throughout this Iraqi capital to root out insurgents.

The offensive, which included some of the strongest firepower used in Baghdad since major combat ended in May, came after a similar operation earlier in the day in Tikrit. They were part of military crackdowns in central Iraq, where anti-American insurgent activity has been strongest.

“This is war,” Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division based in Ramadi in western Iraq, said in Baghdad. “We’re going to use a sledgehammer to crush a walnut.”

“We’re not going to prosecute this war holding one hand behind our back,” he added. “We’re going to use enough in our arsenal to win this fight.”

In northern Iraq, meanwhile, a senior U.S. military official said two survivors of the crashes of a pair of military helicopters Saturday, including a pilot, have told investigators that they did not see any threatening ground fire before their copter crashed.

The official, who requested anonymity because the incident was still under investigation, cautioned that their statements did not mean that hostile fire had been ruled out as a cause of the crashes, which killed 17 soldiers and injured five. The cause of the incident has been in dispute, with some Iraqi witnesses saying that ground fire brought down one or both aircraft.

The military operations Tuesday in the capital and central Iraq were portrayed by U.S. military officials as an offensive designed to crush the remnants of the anti-American insurgency.

Swannack, who commands a broad swath of western Iraq, said that a few months ago commanders might have hesitated before using their heavier weapons, such as AC-130 gunships and precision-guided missiles, but “now there’s no holds barred.”

He said resistance had substantially diminished, with far fewer attacks than in the first month that his division was on the ground. His soldiers have been in the area for two months.

Although there had been many reports of foreign fighters in western Iraq, Swannack said the vast majority of attacks on Americans in his region were the work of people loyal to the former regime of Saddam Hussein and of extremist Sunni Muslims. Just 10% of the attacks are carried out by foreigners, he said.

Swannack said he expected to largely withdraw troops by the first of the year from Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, leaving the job of keeping the city secure to local police and civil defense forces.

In the northern city of Mosul, private memorial services were held Tuesday for victims of Saturday’s helicopter crashes, which investigators believe were involved in a midair collision. The 17 soldiers who died were members of the 101st Airborne Division.

Investigators are looking into enemy fire and poor visibility that night as possible reasons for the crashes, said the senior U.S. military official.

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Rubin reported from Baghdad and McDonnell from Mosul.