World

GIs Swoop Down On Tikrit Suspects

January 9, 2004 / 8:08 AM EST / CBS/AP

U.S. forces detained 12 suspected Iraqi insurgents in Tikrit in one of the biggest raids since the fall of Baghdad. The operation came hours after a Black Hawk medevac helicopter crashed near Fallujah, killing all nine soldiers aboard, and a C-5 transport plane limped safely back to the Baghdad airport after being struck by insurgent fire.

Two blasts also shook central Baghdad shortly after dawn Friday, and security guards said several rockets struck a hotel used by Western contract workers. Windows were shattered and there was other minor damage but no casualties.

More than 300 soldiers swept through Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, just before midnight Thursday in a search for 18 men and teenagers suspected in anti-U.S. attacks, including the Oct. 1 killing of a female American soldier.

In the four-hour operation, the troops took 30 Iraqis into custody, among them 12 of the 18 wanted people. The other detainees were believed to have links to those suspected in the attacks, officials said.

Two of the captured men were suspected of planting a roadside bomb that killed Pfc. Analaura Esparza Gutierrez, 21, of Houston, on Oct. 1.

In other recent developments:

A bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque as worshippers streamed out of Friday prayers into a busy street, killing an unknown number of people in the central Iraqi town of Baqouba. Wailing women tried to cover body parts in the street near a blazing car, according to film from Associated Press Television.

The U.S. military has begun a rotation of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan that amounts to the largest movement of American troops in decades. The changes present an enormous logistics and security challenge as approximately 130,000 troops in Iraq head home over the next four months, to be replaced by a more mobile, less heavily armed force of about 110,000.

The Army, working with the other military services, has been planning the rotation of forces in Iraq for many months. The Pentagon originally hoped that some of the troops there now could be replaced by international forces, but few have been offered for the dangerous duty.

Secretary of State Colin Powell insists that Iraq had had dangerous weapons and needed to be disarmed by force. In Washington Thursday, Powell disagreed with a Carnegie Endowment report that says the Bush administration systematically misrepresented a weapons threat from Iraq, and calls for U.S. strategy should be revised to eliminate the policy of unilateral preventive war.

"I have not seen a smoking gun, concrete evidence about the connection" said Powell of ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, "but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

The U.S. Army says a military team has arrived in Iraq to advise ground commanders on ways to cope with the homemade bombs that insurgents have detonated along roads used by U.S. convoys over the past several months, often killing or maiming soldiers. The team is also doing forensic studies of actual detonated explosives and consulting with commanders on potential improved technical means of defeating these low-tech, improvised bombs.

So far the Iraq conflict has cost the lives of 494 American service members. Most of the deaths - both combat and non-combat - have occurred since President Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1. The loss of American life in this war in Iraq has far surpassed the U.S. death toll of the first Gulf War of 1991, when about 315 Americans died in the operation to drive Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait. That figure includes combat and non-combat deaths suffered during the military buildup and the war itself.

Since April, insurgents in Tikrit have killed five American soldiers and wounded 52, making the city one of the toughest places for coalition forces to control following the collapse of Saddam's three-decade dictatorship.

The Black Hawk, which was clearly marked with a red cross, went down Thursday about four miles south of Fallujah, a stronghold of the anti-American insurgency, according to the 82nd Airborne Division. Witnesses said it was hit by a rocket, but U.S. officials said the cause was unknown.

A farmer who lives in the area, Mohammed Ahmed al-Jamali, said he heard the distinctive whoosh of a rocket and saw the helicopter with damage to its tail. The 27-year-old said he rushed to the scene but found everyone dead.

The helicopter was a medical evacuation aircraft but it was unclear if it was carrying patients, a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Twice before, American helicopters have gone down near Fallujah, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad.

In Thursday's close call at Baghdad International Airport, a transport plane carrying 63 people declared an in-flight emergency and landed safely shortly after takeoff, the Air Force said.

It said initial information indicated the engine exploded as a result of "hostile action from the ground." No one was injured.

Also Thursday, the military said a U.S. soldier died Wednesday of injuries suffered in a mortar attack that wounded 30 other troops and a civilian west of Baghdad.

Hamza Ali, security chief for the compound of the Bourj al-Hayat and Sindibad Palace hotels, said three attackers drove up at 6 a.m., blasted three rounds from shoulder-fired launchers and fled. Ali said security at the hotel, which is protected by blast walls and a checkpoint, had been tipped off about the possibility of an attack.

Two rockets hit the fourth and fifth floors of the Bourj al-Hayat, where U.N. weapons inspectors stayed before the Iraq war started on March 20. A third exploded in the empty hotel pool.

The five-story Bourj al-Hayat also was hit by rocket-propelled grenades on Christmas Day, when anti-U.S. insurgents launched coordinated attacks against several hotels and embassies, injuring two Iraqis.

Later Friday, a bomb planted on a western Baghdad road leading to a U.S. military base exploded, wounding two Iraqi passers-by, said Lt. Col. Anthony Right, commander of the U.S. Army's 17th Engineering Battalion.