3 troops missing as boat capsizes, copter crashes

By Bill Glauber
Chicago Tribune

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two American pilots and the U.S. soldier for whom they were searching were missing and presumed dead yesterday after an Army helicopter crashed into the Tigris River in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

At least two Iraqi police officers and an Iraqi translator also were believed killed in the deadly sequence of events that took place on land, water and in the skies above Mosul, 240 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The incident began unfolding at 5:15 p.m., when a boat on patrol capsized in the river. Aboard were four U.S. soldiers, two Iraqi police officers and a translator, the U.S. Army said.

The police officers and translator died but three of the soldiers survived, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division.

To search for the fourth soldier, an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter — attached to the 101st Airborne — was dispatched. The military did not say what caused the helicopter to go down, but witnesses reported seeing it hit power lines and crash into the river around 6:40 p.m.

A third Iraqi police officer was killed in a drive-by shooting while he was assisting the rescue effort. "One Iraqi policeman was hit in the head and killed instantly," camera operator Alaadin Saad told the Reuters news agency.

The Military Times reported that the soldier missing from the boat was a member of the Fort Lewis-trained Stryker brigade, but that could not be confirmed. The 5,000-soldier Stryker brigade is one of the Army's most high-tech outfits in Iraq.

The Mosul incident capped a deadly weekend for U.S. service members.

Two pilots aboard a Kiowa were killed Friday when it crashed during bad weather near the town of Qayara in northern Iraq. No official cause for the crash has been determined. Five U.S. soldiers died in two separate attacks Saturday, near a U.S. Army checkpoint in Khaldiyah and on a road north of Fallujah.

A sixth U.S. soldier died yesterday from injuries sustained the day before when a rocket-propelled grenade pierced the driver's compartment of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle patrolling the town of Beiji. The critically wounded soldier was evacuated to a military hospital in Baghdad, where he died.

The soldier was the 513th U.S. service member to die in Iraq operations.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.

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