December 11 2003 at 12:09PM
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Mosul - An Apache helicopter that crash-landed near the northern city of Mosul may have been hit by ground fire while making a low pass over the area, American soldiers said on Thursday.
A military spokesperson insisted that Wednesday's incident was caused by mechanical failure and that the crew, who were uninjured, reported no ground fire. But a commander later said that he didn't know whether ground fire brought down the chopper from the 101st Airborne Division.
Meanwhile, an explosion on a pipeline in northern Iraq on Thursday caused officials to halt pumping on the line, a security officer said. Firefighters were trying to extinguish the blaze. It was unclear how important the pipeline was.
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The Apache came down near a highway 19km south of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, which has been the site of escalating anti-occupation resistance in recent weeks.
| 'The helicopter was shot down' |
"The helicopter was shot down," one said.
A military spokesperson blamed the incident on mechanical failure, but Brigadier General Frank Helmick of the 101st later said the cause of the crash was unclear.
"We don't know what happened," he said. "It could have been a mechanical failure but again, we are looking at all possibilities."
Mosul was the site of the deadliest incident so far involving US forces. On November 17, two Black Hawk helicopters collided and crashed, killing 17 soldiers. Although military spokespeople initially insisted that the collision was the result of an accident, officers have since acknowledged that ground fire was the likely cause.
| 'We don't know what happened' |
He said the pipeline links the Beiji refinery in northern Iraq with the al-Doura refinery near Baghdad. A complex grid of pipelines move oil and natural gas throughout the region, and it was unclear how major the pipeline was.
An official said the US-led occupation authority could not confirm a break at that location.
If it is confirmed that the Apache was brought shot down, it would be the sixth military helicopter downed in six weeks.
Also in Mosul on Wednesday, two US soldiers were killed and four injured in two separate attacks.
The predominantly Sunni Muslim city - Iraq's third-largest - is home to many former soldiers and party loyalists of Saddam Hussein, but sits outside the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, where the majority of attacks on American forces have occurred since Saddam's ouster.
In Samarra, another volatile city 100km north of Baghdad, two members of the US-led paramilitary Civil Defence Corps were killed overnight by unidentified gunmen while on patrol, witnesses said on Thursday.
In Baghdad, guerrillas on Wednesday struck a US Air Force C-17 transport plane on takeoff with a ground-fired missile, forcing it to return to the capital's international airport, a senior Pentagon official said.
Meanwhile, Iraq's US-appointed interim government established a war crimes tribunal to try former members of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The new tribunal will cover crimes committed from July 17, 1968 - the day Saddam's Baath Party came to power - until May 1, 2003 when US President George Bush declared major combat over, said Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, president of Iraq's Governing Council.
The tribunal will try cases stemming from mass executions of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, as well as the suppression of uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Muslims after the 1991 Gulf War. Al-Hakim said it would also try cases committed against Iran - with which Iraq fought a bloody 1980-88 war -and against Kuwait, which Iraq invaded in 1990.
In Washington, US defence officials said 250 of the 700 Iraqi soldiers trained by the US-led occupation authority have quit. The battalion completed a nine-week basic training course in October and was to be the core of a new Iraqi army.
It was unclear why a third of the soldiers abandoned their new jobs, though some had complained that the starting salary - US$60 (about R400) a month for privates - was too low, officials said.
In Madrid, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar announced the arrests of suspects in the slaying of seven Spanish intelligence agents in an ambush south of Baghdad on November 29. The US Army said in a statement that 41 "enemy personnel," including the alleged leader of the cell that carried out the attack, were detained. - Sapa-AP
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