Iraqi TV has shown an apache helicopter, which Iraqi information minister, Mohammad Saeed al-Sahaf said was downed together with another helicopter of the same type, by Iraqi farmers near Karbala, South of Baghdad.

In a press conference he gave in the Iraqi capital, noon time, Monday, March 24, 2003, Mr. Sahaf also said hundreds of thousands of well trained Iraqi militias have now been deployed in the South with orders to cut the advancing Anglo-American troops now stretching like a huge Payson, into pieces. He implied that the Iraqi has deliberately allowed the invaders to penetrate deep into the Iraqi desert so as to over stretch their supply lines. He said the trained militias belong to the ruling Baath Party and to volunteers from the general public.

He also ridiculed calls by president Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld for Iraq to abide by the Geneva convention in treating Anglo-American prisoners of war-something which he said Baghdad is already doing, adding that the call by the two men smells of hypocrisy coming from members of an administration that belongs to a country with a long history of human rights violations stretching from Hiroshima and Vietnam to Afghanistan an to the open support they are extending to Israel in its relentless campaign of human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Concluding his briefing Sahaf said that Iraq would, if it deems it convenient, show the pilots of the two downed helicopters on TV despite the crocodile tears shed by president Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld for showing captured US POWs on TV on Sunday.

Mr. Sahaf also ridiculed Bush's claim to a humane treatment of Iraqi POWs whom he, Sehaf, described as civilians displayed in rags as Iraqi prisoners of war on American TV.

US Admit Losing an Apache Helicopter

In as-Saliyah, in Qatar a US military official said, a US Apache helicopter has gone down in Iraq.

"We do have an Apache helicopter down in Iraq," the official, who asked not to be named, said at allied forward command headquarters.

She provided no further details.

The Iraqi TV broadcast showed a grounded but intact aircraft, surrounded by Iraqi civilians shouting slogans and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles.

The Apache AH-64 is the US Army's most advanced helicopter and is designed to attack armoured vehicles.

US Missile Hits Passenger Bus in Syria

A U.S. missile hit a passenger bus carrying Syrian civilians fleeing the war in Iraq, killing five and injuring 10, Syria's official news agency reported Monday.

The agency reported that the air-to-surface missile hit the bus Sunday morning in Iraq close to the Syrian border.

A U.S. Central Command spokeswoman had no information on the report. She said, however, that U.S. forces do not target civilians and that their targeting is done very carefully, using precision-guided missiles against select military targets.

The Syrian agency said the wounded were taken to a Syrian hospital on the Syrian-Iraqi border, while the dead were sent to a hospital on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus, where officials said relatives have retrieved the bodies.

Syria, which strongly opposes the U.S.-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly called for a peaceful solution of the Iraq-U.S. dispute over Baghdad's weapons arsenal.

PHOTO CAPTION

The US has admitted that an Apache helicopter has gone down in Karbala (AFP/File)