Black Hawk Crash Kills Nine US Soldiers near Falluja

08/01/2004| IslamWeb

An American Black Hawk helicopter crashed Thursday after making an "emergency landing" near the Iraqi town of Falluja. All nine are presumed to be soldiers with the US occupying forces. "We have confirmation that there were nine personnel on board," Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, a senior US military spokesman, told a news conference. Another spokesman confirmed all nine were killed. Earlier, the death toll was put at eight. "At this point we still don't have positive identification of the personnel, but we are working under the presumption that they were all American soldiers," Kimmit said in Baghdad. He gave no details on the cause of the crash. Eyewitnesses told Aljazeera correspondent that,"The warplane was hit by a missile and we rushed to the area to see a trail of smoke billowing up in the air from the burning chopper." Smouldering debris littered the crash site in the village of Nuamiya five kilometres southeast of Falluja. Two choppers landed by the crash site, while another two hovered overhead. A US helicopter was shot down on 3 January in the same area, killing one soldier. Military officials said it was almost certainly shot down by anti-occupation fighters. In the deadliest single attack on US forces since the Iraq invasion began in March, 17 soldiers were killed on 15 November when two Black Hawk helicopters collided above Mosul. The latest deaths raise to 224 the number of soldiers killed in action since US President George Bush declared major hostilities over on 1 May. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A U.S. Army Kiowa scout helicopter searches the farm fields near the crash site after a Blackhawk helicopter crashed near the restive central Iraq town of Falluja, January 8, 2004. (REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz)