Meanwhile, the Tar Baby just grows.
Two U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq Helicopter Crash
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 25, 2004; 3:20 PM
BAGHDAD, Feb. 25-- An OH-58 Kiowa helicopter crashed into the Euphrates River northwest of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing the two U.S. soldiers on board, and gunmen assassinated a senior Iraqi police official in the northern city of Mosul.
The helicopter, an armed reconnaissance craft that carries a two-man crew, went down at 1:50 p.m. near the town of Haditha, which is 120 miles northwest of the capital. U.S. military officials said the cause had yet to be determined, but Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, said the crew of a second helicopter saw no hostile fire.
News agencies, quoting witnesses in Haditha, offered conflicting accounts. One reported seeing a missile strike the helicopter. Another said the Kiowa, which typically flies low to avoid enemy fire, struck a power line before crashing into the river.
Since the occupation began in April, the U.S. military has lost more than a dozen helicopters, most to ground fire in a region north and west of Baghdad known as the Sunni triangle. The deadliest was Nov. 15 when two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters collided over Mosul, killing 17 soldiers. At least four other Kiowas have crashed.
In Mosul, a city at the edge of the triangle, gunmen assassinated Hikmat Mahmoud Mohammed, the city's deputy police chief. He was killed on his way to work Wednesday, police said, the latest in a campaign of assassinations in Iraq's third-largest city targeting officials, police, translators and others working with the occupation.
February has marked the bloodiest month in Iraq since the occupation began, with scores of Iraqis killed in a devastating series of suicide bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere. U.S. officials have said they believe violence will mount as the country nears the formal end of direct U.S. rule of the country. Under a U.S. plan for transferring power, an Iraqi governing body is scheduled to assume sovereignty June 30.
The next key date comes Saturday, when the Iraqi Governing Council is due to complete its work on a body of law that will serve as an interim constitution. But key members of the council say they remain divided over central issues that will shape any postwar government -- namely, federalism and the role of Islam in legislation.
In particular, Kurds have insisted on preserving the status quo that has prevailed in northern Iraq since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. In talks with U.S. and other Iraqi officials, Kurdish leaders have demanded the right to control their own military forces, known as the pesh merga, and reject laws passed by a national government.
In Baghdad, a Kurdish group, the Referendum Movement of Kurdistan, said Wednesday that it had collected 1.7 million signatures over the past month on a petition demanding a vote in Kurdish areas on the future of the region. Organizers said signatures were gathered in cities such as Kirkuk, Mosul and Khanaqin, which all lie outside the northern areas that have been under effective Kurdish control since 1991.
Kurds make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population, which is predominantly Arab. More than 100,000 Kurds were believed killed in a brutal military campaign ordered by former president Saddam Hussein before the Gulf War.
"The Kurdish people want to be involved in the political process, and they have the right to decide their destiny by themselves -- whether to have federalism or independence," said Halkod Abdullah, one of the group's organizers. "The Kurdish people will not give up the rights they achieved over the last 12 years."
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