BAGHDAD, Iraq - A British military helicopter apparently was hit by a missile
Saturday and crashed in Basra, triggering a confrontation in which jubilant
Iraqis pelted British troops with stones, hurled firebombs and shouted slogans
in support of a radical Shiite Muslim cleric.
Iraqi police said four British crew members died in the crash in the southern
city, and four Iraqi adults and a child were reported killed during the ensuing
melee when Shiite gunmen exchanged fire with British soldiers who hurried to the
scene. About 30 civilians were injured.
A British armoured
vehicle burns after Iraqi and British soldiers clashed with Iraqi
residents following a British helicopter crash in Basra, 550 Km,
(341miles) south of Baghdad May 6, 2006. A British military helicopter was
shot down by a rocket in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Saturday,
Iraqi police said, and firefighters said they had found four charred
bodies in the wreckage. [Reuters] |
Reminiscent of
other outbursts of Iraqis cheering the deaths of foreigners, the chaotic scene
was widely shown on Iraqi state television and on the Al-Jazeera satellite
station.
The violence underscored that discontent over the presence of foreign
soldiers has been growing among Iraq's majority Shiites even though they have
generally steered clear of the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.
Police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said the helicopter went down in a vacant lot
between two houses after it was struck by a shoulder-fired missile — a weapon
widely available among insurgent groups and armed militias in Iraq. He said the
four crew members were killed.
British soldiers with armored vehicles rushed to the site and were met by a
hail of stones from a crowd of at least 250 people, many of them teenagers, who
jumped for joy and raised their fists as thick smoke rose from the wreckage.
As many as three armored vehicles were set on fire, apparently with gasoline
bombs and a rocket-propelled grenade, but the troops inside escaped unhurt,
witnesses said.
The crowd chanted "we are all soldiers of al-Sayed," a reference to radical
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ardent foe of foreign troops being in Iraq.
Calm returned by nightfall as Iraqi authorities imposed a curfew and hundreds
of Iraqi police and soldiers set up checkpoints and patrolled the streets,
residents said. Sporadic rocket fire could be heard throughout Basra, Iraq's
second largest city.
The British Defense Ministry confirmed only that there were "casualties" in
the afternoon crash but refused to give a figure or discuss the cause.
A British spokeswoman, Capt. Kelly Goodall, said British soldiers who
responded came "under attack by a variety of weapons, including small arms fire,
petrol bombs, as well as blast bombs and stone."
She said the soldiers fired "a small number of live rounds" in self defense.
She said there was some minor injuries among the troops on the ground, but gave
no details.
In London, Britain's newly appointed defense secretary, Des Browne, said he
was "deeply saddened" by the death of British soldiers, "which reminds us of the
risks our servicemen and women face every day" in Iraq.
The crash came at a tough time for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who
angered many Britons, including members of his own Labour Party, by his support
for the war. On Friday, Blair carried out a sweeping overhaul of his Cabinet
after Labour suffered a drubbing in local elections, drawing calls for the prime
minister to set a firm timetable for leaving office.
Tensions have been worsening in southern Iraq, where Britain has about 8,000
soldiers and other countries also have troops.
Three Polish soldiers were wounded by a bomb Saturday in the mostly Shiite
city of Diwaniyah. On April 27, a roadside bomb killed three Italian soldiers
and one Romanian near Nasiriyah, another Shiite city in the south.
Trouble in the largely Shiite region is due in part to the growing influence
of al-Sadr, who led two armed uprisings against U.S.-led forces in 2004 and who
has been an outspoken critic of the U.S.-led foreign military mission.
Last September, British troops battled Shiite gunmen in Basra after two
British undercover soldiers were seized by police, whose ranks have been
infiltrated by Shiite militiamen. British forces staged a raid that freed the
men.
Tensions boiled again in February when the London newspaper News of the World
published video images that appeared to show British soldiers beating Iraqi
civilians during a riot in Amarah in 2004.
Shiite anger has also been stoked by a perceived shift in U.S. policy since
the arrival of U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni Muslim who has
criticized the Shiite-led Interior Ministry for human rights abuses and made
overtures to Sunni insurgents in hopes of getting them to lay down their arms.
In violence elsewhere, a suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi army uniform entered
an Iraqi base in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and detonated an explosives
belt, killing three officers, said the Iraqi Defense Ministry's spokesman, Maj.
Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed Jassim.
The attack appeared to be part of an insurgent campaign to discourage Sunni
Arabs from joining the government army and police.
The U.S. command also announced that an American soldier was killed by a
roadside bomb in Baghdad on Friday. At least 2,417 U.S. military personnel have
died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.
In other developments Saturday, according to police:
* Two Iraqi soldiers and three insurgents were killed in a firefight near
Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad.
* A car bomb killed two policemen and an Iraqi soldier about 30 miles north
of Baqouba.
* One policeman was killed and eight people injured by roadside bombings in
the capital. A drive-by shooting killed two brothers in the city.
* Police in Baghdad found the bodies of 18 Iraqi men who had been kidnapped
and brutally killed by sectarian death squads. Meanwhile, seven Iraqis,
including three paramilitary policemen, were kidnapped south of Baghdad.
* A roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul wounded two Iraqi policemen.
Police also found the bullet-ridden bodies a father and son who had been
kidnapped earlier in the day.