- TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) -
Iraqi guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter
which came down near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Saturday, wounding
one American soldier.
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- Initial reports had said five soldiers were wounded.
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- As the aircraft blazed on the ground within sight of
a major U.S. base, soldiers told a Reuters photographer at the scene that
a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit it in the air. But a U.S. military
spokeswoman in Baghdad said it was unclear what brought it down, only that
RPGs were fired on the wreck.
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- "After the aircraft was on the ground, it was attacked
with RPGs," she said, saying it was "presently not known"
what brought the Black Hawk down.
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- She said only one soldier was wounded among the crew
of five who were rescued by a second helicopter from green, low-lying farmland
about three km (two miles) east of the U.S. military base.
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- Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj heard a loud bang before
the helicopter fell from the sky.
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- Rocket attacks are a daily fact of life for the U.S.
forces on the ground. But there has been only one report of hostile fire
bringing down aircraft since major combat was declared over on May 1, despite
American fears about the availability of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft
missiles in Iraq.
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- U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of
the architects of Washington's campaign against Saddam, had left the Tikrit
base by helicopter for Kirkuk in the north just hours earlier, after visiting
troops engaged in one of the main hotspots of Iraqi resistance to the occupation
forces.
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- Visiting Iraq for the second time in three months, Wolfowitz
stressed the importance of speeding up the formation of a new Iraqi army,
police force, border guard and civil defense corps.
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- He also questioned why the Iraqi civil defense corps
is projected to have 22,000 personnel instead of 100,000.
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- Tikrit is around 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad,
near the apex of the "Sunni Triangle" north and west of the capital
where many of Saddam's fellow Sunni Muslims, fearful of power going to
the Shi'ite majority, have opposed U.S. occupiers.
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- The Black Hawk is the U.S. Army's front-line utility
helicopter, designed to carry 11 combat-ready assault troops and is also
used for medical evacuations.
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