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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bucky Katt who wrote (16501)	4/21/2005 12:51:42 PM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 20773

Six American Contractors Dead in Iraq Helicopter Attack By Ellen Knickmeyer and Fred Barbash Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, April 21, 2005; 11:55 AM BAGHDAD, April 21 -- A helicopter carrying contractors for the U.S. Defense Department was shot down Thursday killing nine people, including six Americans, U.S. and Bulgarian officials said. The helicopter, a Russian-made Mi-8 piloted by a three-man Bulgarian crew, was brought down about 12 miles north of Baghdad at 1:45 p.m. local time. An embassy official said the the six American passengers worked for Blackwater Security Consulting, a North Carolina-based contracting firm that provides security for U.S. officials in Iraq. Blackwater has paid a heavy price in the war in Iraq. Two Blackwater employees died in March in an insurgent attack 60 miles south of Baghdad. A year earlier, four Blackwater employees were killed in the turbulent city of Fallujah and two of the corpses hung from a bridge, triggering a bloody three-week siege by U.S. Marines. "The helicopter was shot by missile fire" according to a statement issued by the Bulgarian Defense Ministry in Sofia. The Arabic language television network Al-Jazeera briefly showed what it said was the burning wreckage of the helicopter. The downing marks the first time insurgents have succeeded in bringing down a civilian aircraft in Iraq, where insurgent bombs and ambushes have made ground travel in several areas of the country high-risk. Also Thursday, news agencies reported the deaths of five people, at least three of them Westerners, in attacks along the route to Baghdad's airport, one of the most dangerous roads in the country. U.S. troops blocked the highway, which leads to Iraq's international airport and U.S. military installations. Gunmen killed three foreign contractors on the same road on Wednesday. Separately, Iraqi forces pulled 18 more bodies out of the Tigris River, one day after authorities several miles upstream had disclosed the discovery of 58 bodies in the river. Iraq's President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday he believed the 58 bodies were those of Shiites who were reportedly taken hostage by Sunni insurgents around the town of Maidan last weekend. News of the hostage-taking raised Sunni-Shiite tensions, at least among Iraq's lawmakers, but security forces and journalists could find no sign of such hostages in sweeps of Maidan earlier this week. Like the find announced Wednesday, some of the bodies discovered Thursday were in advanced states of decay, making it unclear how long they had been in the water and whether they were linked to the alleged hostage-taking. Fishermen spotted the latest bodies early Thursday in the water near Aziziyah, south of Baghdad, police 1st Lt. Ghazwan Hussein said. Police discovered a total of 18, all men, Hussein said. Sand bags had been placed on the corpses to keep them from rising to the surface.