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Helicopter Downed, 4 U.S. Soldiers Killed In Iraq: Jazeera
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The downed U.S. helicopter
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CAIRO,
May 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Four U.S. soldiers
were killed in Iraq on Wednesday, May 28, when their helicopter was
downed, as demonstrators in the capital slammed the American civil
administrator’s decision to dissolve ministries of defense and
information as well as the “provocative” acts of the occupation
troops.
The
four soldiers were killed when their helicopter was downed in the town
of Hit, 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, Al-Jazeera television said.
The
Pentagon said it had no information on any missing or crashed U.S.
helicopter in Iraq, and that the U.S. occupation forces in Baghdad
knew of no such incident but that checks were being made, Reuters
reported.
Al-Jazeera
correspondent quoted witnesses in the town, saying that they downed
the plane “in response to the U.S. military provocations”.
“There
are 200 people ready to blew themselves up against U.S. military
targets after the occupation forces trundled into the town and stormed
into its houses,” said one eyewitness.
Other
witnesses said the helicopter crashed during clashes after some angry
residents attacked a local police station and set fire to it.
The
residents were furious that Iraqi police helped the invading forces in
house-to- house searches allegedly for weapons, said Al-Jazeera
reported.
The
correspondent said that one of the key figures in the town made a deal
with the U.S. forces to withdraw from the area within four hours to
avoid more bloody clashes with the residents.
The
correspondent was interrupted several times during his live
transmission by what sounded like a crowd chanting anti-U.S. slogans
and vowing revenge.
“Children
and women were panicked at the U.S. soldiers entering their houses and
carrying out their search,” said one eyewitness.
People
in Iraq complain that American forces detain people at checkpoints for
no justified reasons and carry out other “provocative” acts.
“The
Americans were provocatively searching civilian cars, paying no
respect to the residents of Falluja,” Saqr Abdul Rahman, an
eyewitness to Tuesday’s resistance attack, told IslamOnline.net in
the city in which two U.S. soldiers were
killed and nine others injured on Tuesday, May 27.
An
American helicopter trying to evacuate the wounded was also shot down
during the fire fighting. This came a day after four
U.S. soldiers were killed and six others wounded amid a flare-up
of resistance activity across occupied Iraq.
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Iraqis complain the U.S. military practices are “provocative” |
Fallujah
has seen growing anti-American sentiments since the forces trundled
into it few weeks ago. Demonstrations calling for an end to occupation
left 19 civilians dead and 76 at least injured by the U.S. gunfire on
April 28 and 30. Seven U.S. soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack
in the city few days afterwards.
Demonstrations
Meanwhile,
a demonstration erupted in the Iraqi capital against U.S. civil
administrator Paul Bremer’s decision to dissolve the ministries of
defense and information.
The
demonstrators, mostly students of the Iraqi military engineering
faculty and former civil servants of the Information Ministry.
“We
are not blowing the former regime’s trumpets, We are civilian
citizens,” read one of the banners waived by former employees of the
Information Ministry, the first to be hit by the U.S. missiles in the
March 20 invasion.
They
marched to the Republican Palace, where the U.S. civil administration
is headquartered, and converged with the students of the Defense
Ministry’s engineering faculty. The protestors handed out a letter
to Bremer calling for reconsidering the dissolution decision.
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