U.S. Crash in Iraq Kills 12

A U.S. helicopter with 12 passengers and crew members crashed in northern Iraq, killing all on board, the military command said Sunday. In addition, five Marines were reported killed in action, bringing to as many as 28 the number of American troops slain in Iraq since Thursday.

The crash of the UH-60 Black Hawk military chopper late Saturday was the deadliest in Iraq since a transport helicopter went down in January 2005 near the Jordanian border, killing 30 Marines and a sailor.

A spokesman for U.S.-led forces would not confirm the nationality or the identity of those killed in the Black Hawk pending notification of next of kin. “At this time we believe all the victims were U.S. citizens,” the spokesman said.

The cause of the crash was under investigation, and it was not immediately known whether the aircraft came under fire from insurgents. A military spokesman noted, however, that the Black Hawk went down amid high winds and heavy rainfall.

There have been nearly two dozen fatal helicopter crashes in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003, and at least 144 people have died in them, according to Associated Press. Some of the wrecks have been accidents, others the result of hostile fire.

The Black Hawk helicopter was one of two on night operations Saturday and had lost radio contact with the other aircraft before crashing in a sparsely populated area about eight miles east of Tall Afar, a city near Mosul.

The military often flies missions at night, including the transport of troops via helicopter. But aviation experts say darkness can complicate making an emergency landing, difficult in a chopper under the best of circumstances.

“Helicopters are fairly unstable vehicles that need constant pilot attention,” said Peter Field, a Vietnam War-era Marine colonel and former director of the Navy’s test pilot school in Patuxent River, Md. “Flying over the vacant desert at night would pose a little bit more of a task for the pilot.”

Field, now serving as a St. Louis-based civil aviation consultant, says investigators can ascertain fairly quickly whether a crash was caused by mechanical error or hostile fire once they examine the fuselage.

“If the aircraft were hit by a surface-to-air missile or rocket-propelled grenade you’d be able to tell,” he said. “The crash site won’t contain the whole vehicle. There will be parts that fell along the way.”

Nearby Tall Afar has long been a site of insurgent activity. In September, U.S. planes bombed several houses in Tall Afar, which one military official referred to as a “terrorist incubator,” after the town’s residents were urged to evacuate. Weapons caches and high-tech bomb factories were uncovered by U.S. troops.

In ground action, three of the five Marines killed over the weekend were slain by small-arms fire in separate incidents Sunday in the city of Fallouja. The U.S. military also reported that two Marines riding in separate vehicles near Ferris and Karmah died in roadside bomb explosions.

On Thursday, 11 U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed around the country amid bombings and other insurgent attacks. More than 2,200 U.S. military personnel have died in the Iraq theater since the invasion.

In other violence, gunfights broke out Sunday between insurgents and Iraqi police in the Adel neighborhood of west Baghdad, leaving one officer dead and 13 people wounded.

A suicide car bomber targeted the convoy of Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq’s national security advisor, killing two people and injuring five. The official was unharmed.

U.S. and Iraqi leaders have attempted to quell the insurgency by drawing Sunni Arabs into the government. Adnan Dulaimi, a leader of the main Sunni Arab slate in last month’s election, met Sunday with interim President Jalal Talabani and expressed willingness to bring his coalition into government “so long as no side will dominate the government.”

Meanwhile, U.S.-led forces on Sunday raided the Umm Qura Mosque in Baghdad, headquarters of the Muslim Scholars Assn., a hard-line group of clerics the U.S. has accused of terrorist activities.

The clerics held a news conference to denounce the action in which coalition forces broke down doors and rifled files.

And under heavy security, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Sunday visited a pediatric hospital in Baghdad whose renovation is one of 19 such projects the U.S. government is financing in Iraq. He said Americans are investing in children “because they are the future of this country.”

A health official attached to the U.S. Embassy said the United States will have spent $786 million on Iraqi medical infrastructure over the three years ending in September.