US checking whether helicopter down in Iraq

Baghdad, Feb 2: The US military in Iraq said it was checking reports from Iraqi police and residents that a helicopter came down just north of Baghdad today.

''We're looking at reports of a possible aircraft down,'' a spokeswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Josslyn Aberle said, when asked about reports from residents near Taji that they saw a helicopter come down shortly after dawn.

A source at Baghdad police headquarters said the police had been told by the Iraqi army that a US helicopter had come down and that US troops had sealed the area.

US embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said: ''At this point, we're looking into the reports.'' Taji, on the northern outskirts of the capital, is the site of a major US air base. Dozens of US military helicopters have come down, some of them hit by missiles or gunfire, in four years of fighting in Iraq.

Last month, 12 soldiers, were killed when a Blackhawk transport helicopter came down northeast of Baghdad. There was a media report that it was shot down although there has been no confirmation of that.

On Sunday, two Americans were killed when their attack helicopter came down during a battle south of Baghdad with what the Iraqi government described as hundreds of fighters from a militant messianic cult. Iraqi officers said it was shot down.

Last week, five American security contractors were killed in central Baghdad, four of them aboard a helicopter that came down and the fifth shot dead aboard a second helicopter.

REUTERS

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