Chinook shot down by RPG...

full story

Afghanistan, where the Russian Mi-24 Hind was known for.

CIA trained these guys on how to shoot down and capture those powerful birds and even issued Stingers. Maybe they trained them very well.

Lots of pirated "Blackhawk Down" CDs in the market. May have inspired those rebels.

It was not a lucky shot, the Afghans have had a lot of practice before during the Soviet occupation. They use proximity fused warheads which they fire ahead of the advancing helo or wait until the helo is hovering before firing the launchers.

8 of those killed were US Navy SEALs:

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3546666

Sad, the Americans are getting clobbered by cheap weapons and superior small unit tactics employed by the Al Qaeda/Taliban elements.

BTW, the 4-man SEAL recon team that the unit in the crashed Chinook came to rescue are still missing.

Let's just hope that the AQT have not captured them. These guys have a reputation of skinning their captives alive.

U.S. searches for missing special forces in Afghanistan

full story

These guys have excellent EE tactics, they should pull through. :thumb:

July 4, 2005, 1:19AM
Missing SEAL rescued alive
Commando one of four whose Afghan mission went awry in deadly region
By CARLOTTA GALL and THOM SHANKER
New York Times

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - One member of a four-man Navy SEAL reconnaissance team has been rescued after his group was reported missing in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan last week, a senior Defense Department official said Sunday.

No details about how the commando evaded Taliban fighters for about five days were disclosed. Pentagon and military officials in Washington and Afghanistan declined to release details of the rescue until the status of the three other members of the Special Operations team, still listed as missing, could be determined.

News of the rescue came as Afghanistan's defense minister confirmed a sharp upsurge in activity by insurgents and foreign fighters and said that the rebels were better armed than in past years.

The senior U.S. Defense Department official said the sailor was in good enough health to provide the U.S. military with a report of how the long-range reconnaissance mission had gone awry.

The SEAL reconnaissance team, which called for help on Tuesday while on a mission to find Taliban fighters or other insurgents, was declared missing after a Special Operations Chinook helicopter sent to extract it crashed. The helicopter appeared to have been shot down. All 16 people aboard were killed. The crash is the single largest combat loss for U.S. forces since the war in Afghanistan started in 2001, and is the first time U.S. officials have acknowledged that a unit has disappeared in the country.

The events occurred in Kunar Province, a rugged area in northeastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border.

The fighting was the latest in a recent string of battles against larger and more seasoned rebel forces, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

Taliban members have joined forces with insurgents loyal to other anti-American commanders and with members of the al-Qaida terrorist network, and have increased their efforts in recent months to attack U.S. and Afghan government forces, according to an assessment by the Afghan defense minister, Gen. Abdur Rahim Wardak.

In a telephone interview Sunday, Wardak said the sudden escalation of the insurgency since the snow melted and the mountain passes opened had been greater than the traditional spring increase.

"Based on intelligence, there is a regrouping of al-Qaida, and it seems they are going to pay more attention to Afghanistan," he said. "We are running into more foreign fighters here and there," he said. Afghan and U.S. forces have picked up foreign fighters and foreigners who were involved in attacks or have admitted to plotting them. Most of them have been Pakistanis, but there have also been Arabs, possibly including two dead suicide bombers, and some fighters from Russian or Central Asian republics.

2 SEALs found dead, one still unaccounted...

yahoo news

Taliban vows to kill 'captured' American in days
Fri Jul 8, 2005 4:18 AM ET

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military searched for an eleventh day on Friday for a U.S. commando missing in eastern Afghanistan, while the Taliban said their guerrillas were interrogating the man and would kill him within days.

The U.S. military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar province on June 28, has been captured.

And Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi has given no evidence to back his claim that the guerrillas are holding him.

Speaking to Reuters from an undisclosed location on Friday, Hakimi said he was unable to provide the name or a description of the commando because of difficulties contacting guerrillas holding him.

However, he insisted: "The soldier is with us.

"He is alive, but we will kill him in the coming couple of days. We are interrogating him and that is why we have kept him alive. The interrogation is about American military tactics and their operations."

He repeated that a video of the man would be provided to media organizations. He said the Taliban Web site -- www.alemarah.com -- on which the guerrillas intended to post pictures of the commando, had been blocked by the Americans.

U.S. military spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy Moore said troops were searching for the missing commando. She said she did not know how long it would continue.

The U.S. military has said two members of the missing commando team were found dead on Monday, and had been "killed in action," while another had been rescued.

A U.S. helicopter sent to aid the team was shot down the same day they went missing, killing all 16 troops aboard, the heaviest losses for U.S. forces in a single combat operation since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

If what Hakimi is saying is true, it would be a major embarrassment for the United States, which is already suffering its bloodiest year in Afghanistan since invading in 2001.

The Taliban has never before captured, or claimed to have captured, a U.S. soldier.

Navy SEALs are trained to operate behind enemy lines and the rescued commando evaded militants for five days.

The military says the search, involving more than 300 U.S. troops backed by aircraft and Afghan forces, has been hampered by rugged, wooded terrain and cloudy weather.

sheet...not even a well-trained SEAL can withstand these guys interrogation methods.

his dead comrades were better off than him, killed by gunfire rather than by slow and agonizing death ...

the gung-ho americans are learning their lessons the hard way...

how many Chinooks have been lost over Iraq and Afghanistan? didn't one of these things go down off Mindanao a while back?

US finds body of missing commando

The body of a US special forces soldier who disappeared in Afghanistan has been found, the US military has confirmed.

The US said all indications were that the commando died in fighting, dismissing a claim by the Taleban that they had captured and killed him.

The commando was part of an elite Navy Seals unit that went missing in a mountainous area of eastern Konar province on 28 June.

Two members of the team were later found dead while a third was rescued.

Hundreds of US soldiers and Afghan forces had been scouring the mountains to find the missing commando.

At the weekend, a man who said he spoke for the Taleban, Mullah Latif Hakimi, said the missing commando had been beheaded in the Shegal district of Kunar province. However, he offered no proof for the claim.

A US Chinook helicopter carrying reinforcements to the region was shot down on 28 June, killing all 16 soldiers on board.

It was the heaviest number of deaths US forces have suffered in a single incident in Afghanistan since toppling the Taleban in 2001.

The downing of the helicopter was followed by a US bombing raid in Konar province which, the provincial governor said, left at least 17 civilians, including women and children, dead.

There has been a sharp rise in activity by the Taleban and their allies in south-eastern and eastern Afghanistan.

They have vowed to disrupt parliamentary elections due to be held in September.

Al-Qaeda's 'Chinook video' aired

The video shows the ID card of a US soldier killed in the fighting
An Arabic TV station has aired video footage shot by al-Qaeda fighters which they say shows the gunning down of a US Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan.

The fighting led to the heaviest losses in the history of America's special operations Navy Seals.

The tape shows the identity card of a Navy Seal who died in the fighting as well as documents the fighters say they captured from an American computer.

The fighting took place in Kunar province in late June and July.

'Hostile fire'
-----

Not only having shot it down, they shot a video shooting it down. :armyeek:

the vid:

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?Cli...D=73178&ak=null

U.S. chopper crashes in Philippines, no survivors yet

By Pedro Uchi
REUTERS
February 22, 2002

DUMAGUETE, Philippines – Three American soldiers were killed when their special forces helicopter involved in anti-terrorist training exercises crashed in the sea in the southern Philippines on Friday, officials said.

Seven others were listed as unaccounted for and rescuers said hopes of finding any of them alive were fading.

The MH-47 Chinook helicopter, with eight crew and two other soldiers on board, went down during a night flight in the Bohol Strait some 660 km (410 miles) south of Manila, said Brigadier-General Donald Wurster, special forces chief of the U.S. Pacific Command.

The victims were the first casualites in what is viewed as the second front of Washington's stepped-up war against terror. Some 660 U.S. soldiers are in the southern Philippines to help train the local military to fight Muslim guerrillas linked to Osama bin Laden.

Philippine officials had earlier said two, perhaps three, people had been plucked alive from the sea, but Wurster said the other seven were still unaccounted for.

"We of course hope they are alive and we are doing everything we can to try and find them," he told reporters in Zamboanga, the headquarters of the Philippine military's southern command.

"The search for survivors will continue until we are convinced there are none," he added.

"We had an aircraft there immediately, we had people in the water where the aircraft impacted. We are starting there and we are expanding the area of search, taking into account the current."

But Philippine officials, some of them veterans of many search operations in the choppy seas of the archipelago, held out little hope.

"It's providential at this point," coast guard chief Vice-Admiral Reuben Lista told Reuters. "At this point, it's up to somebody up there."

"So far, coast guard vessels scouring a diameter of 12 nautical miles from the crash site have found one tyre, one wheel, one lifeboat and the nose of the helicopter."

OIL SPILL

A Reuters television and photo crew which flew over the crash site saw a big oil spill spreading out from the scene.

Other officials said some 40 fishing boats and Philippine navy and coast guard vessels had joined the search.

The giant, twin-rotor helicopter, one of two flying in tandem, had just completed a series of night flying sorties, ferrying Green Beret special forces and equipment slung under the belly to Basilan island where Filipino soldiers are battling Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who have been linked to bin Laden's al Qaeda.

After completing the deployment, the chopper took off from Basilan to its base in the central city of Cebu. It went down just about half an hour's flying time short of the destination, close to the town of Dumaguete.

The other helicopter reported the crash and stayed on for rescue operations. Its crew recovered the three dead bodies almost immediately.

Mystery surrounded the cause of the crash of the helicopter. Some fishermen said they heard an explosion and others said they saw the helicopter come down in flames.

"There were no reports of hostile fire," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters.

Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said: "It could be human error, it could be a mechanical failure. We are not ruling out anything."

There has been considerable opposition to the U.S. deployment in the Philippines and shots were fired at a U.S. military transport plane last month, although no one was hurt.

Officials said there was low-level cloud at the time of the crash and the sea was choppy, but conditions were not unusual.

EXERCISES UNAFFECTED

MH-47s are upgraded versions of the CH-47 Chinook troop-carrying helicopter and are configured for night operations and other work by elite soldiers. The crash would not alter schedules for the exercises, the Philippine military said.

Some 6,000 Philippine troops are hunting Abu Sayyaf guerrillas on Basilan and 160 U.S. special forces will be there until June to train them. Another 500 U.S. support personnel will be in the nearby city of Zamboanga and in Cebu, the main staging area for the U.S. forces.

A total of 22 American troops have already died in or near Afghanistan in a four-month-old U.S. military thrust there. Few of those deaths have been in military action.

Navy believes video shows SEAL's ID, weapon
Sailor was one of three killed on a mission in Afghanistan

From Barbara Starr
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, August 11, 2005; Posted: 8:47 a.m. EDT (12:47 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A purported al Qaeda video aired on an Arabic-language news network appears to show the photo identification card and weapon of one of the Navy SEALs killed in late June in eastern Afghanistan, a Navy official said.

The card shows the name of Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, 25, of Littleton, Colorado, who died on or around June 28 in the Afghan mountains while part of a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team. His body was recovered July 4.

"We have no reason to believe it's not his," the official said.

The two-hour video, aired on Al-Arabiya satellite news network Friday, also shows an M-4 carbine -- the type Navy SEALs use in the field, he said.

The official could not verify that a laptop computer shown on the tape was a Navy computer. But he said SEALs often take computers on missions to retrieve maps and information on locations, targeting insurgent activities.

The video shows an apparent body from the shoulders up, with a helmet on the head. No face is shown.

Navy officials said they could not confirm anything about that part of the video, except to say the way the body was dressed is not how SEALs dress in the field.

The video segment is part a propaganda film titled "The War of the Oppressed People."

'Enemy fire' forces down Chinooks

Enemy fire forced down two US Chinook helicopters in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the US military said on Monday.

Five US and one Afghan soldier were injured when the helicopters made emergency landings at separate locations in the south.

A US military statement says both helicopters had been involved in combat operations against "enemy forces".

US-led coalition forces have come under mounting attack from Taleban and other insurgents in the south and the east.

Afghanistan

The latest incidents bring to seven the number of US helicopters brought down by hostile fire or involved in accidents in Afghanistan this year.

In June, 16 US military personnel died when the Chinook they were travelling in was shot down by militants in the eastern Kunar province.

A sandstorm was blamed for a US helicopter crash in April that killed 18 soldiers - the single heaviest loss of life for US troops since they entered Afghanistan in 2001.

Five US soldiers were injured in one of Sunday's incident, north of Kandahar, when a Chinook made a hard landing, leaving the aircraft a write-off.

One Afghan soldier was hurt in the other, at a forward operating base south of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan province when the helicopter returned to the base after coming under fire.

None of the injuries is serious, the US military statement said.

On Sunday, a man claiming to speak for the Taleban said its supporters had brought down the helicopter in Kandahar.

'Suicide bomb'

In a separate incident on Sunday, at least two people were killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack in the southern city of Kandahar, police said.

The suspected bomber was killed, as was a civilian. Two passers-by were hurt.

There were no reports of casualties among Canadian members of the US-led coalition who are thought to have been the target of the attack.

Suicide bombings in Afghanistan have risen this year, a number of them in the former Taleban stronghold of Kandahar.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in violence linked to militancy in Afghanistan this year, most of it in the south and east of the country.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4497186.stm

Still lucky shots?

Taliban commander makes appearance on US TV

Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON -- A Taliban commander fighting US troops in Afghanistan made his debut on US television Tuesday, claiming that his troops had killed three US Navy Seals and downed a Chinook helicopter.

Thirty-five-year-old Commander Ismail was interviewed by NBC News in August and again this month with his face covered except for his eyes.

Both times, the Taliban made sure their location remained a secret, the network said.

An NBC producer was taken on a confusing seven-hour odyssey to an unknown location, where Ismail then appeared.

Ismail said that in June, he deliberately laid a trap for US Special Forces in Afghanistan.

"We certainly know that when the American army comes under pressure and they get hit, they will try to help their friends," he said through an interpreter. "It is the law of the battlefield."

A tape obtained by NBC News showed what appears to be some of the battle, and the Taliban's unsuccessful attempt to coax a Navy Seal to surrender.

When the US military sent in a rescue team aboard a helicopter, Ismails men were waiting with a rocket-propelled grenade, downing the helicopter, and then spreading out recovered weapons and high-tech equipment.

Ismail also said ousted Taliban leader Mullah Omar is alive and well and that the mujahaddin are fighting under his command and control.

NBC News said it had provided details of the interview to US intelligence.

The network quoted unnamed senior officials as saying his claims were consistent with what they knew about the battle, and they had no reason to believe that the man was not Commander Ismail.

US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks against New York and Washington.

Remnants of the Taliban have since waged an insurgency against the Afghan government and the NATO-led peacekeeping forces.

http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?in...&story_id=61299

U.S. Apache copter crashes in Iraq, killing two

JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter crashed north of the Iraqi capital Monday - the third American chopper to go down in 10 days - killing the two crew members. A resident said he saw the smoke trail of a missile before the aircraft plunged to the ground.

The military said the AH-64 Apache was conducting a combat air patrol when it went down in an area "known for terrorist activity." Officials said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash, and the names of the dead soldiers were not released. Apaches hold only a pilot and a co-pilot.

Video footage shot by AP Television News in Mishahda, north of Baghdad, showed smoke billowing from what was reported to be the crash site. Helicopters circled nearby.

Two militant groups claimed they shot down the helicopter. Neither claim could be verified.

Rashid Khalifa, 27, who has a food and drink stand in the area, said he saw the attack. "I saw the smoke trail left by the missile," he said. "I heard a hissing sound, looked around and saw the helicopter losing control before crashing down."

The U.S. command questioned the credibility of a video purportedly showing an attack on a helicopter that was posted on the Internet by one of the militant groups, the Mujahedeen Army.

The wobbly video showed a militant firing a shoulder-launched missile toward what appeared to be a helicopter in the distance. The aircraft in the video was hit, burst into flames and crashed to the ground.

"A review of the footage on television of a missile being fired does not appear to show this incident today, which remains under investigation," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. spokesman.

"This appears to be another case of terrorists attempting to manipulate a tragic incident in the international media and getting the most news value out of it by using footage of something else to gain greater attention," he added.

The other group that claimed in an Internet posting that it shot down the helicopter was the Salahudin al-Ayoubi Brigade. Both groups have carried out previous attacks.

The number of fatal U.S. military helicopter crashes in Iraq has spiked in recent weeks, fitting a wartime pattern of more frequent accidental and combat crashes during winter months.

An OH-58 Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopter crashed near the northern city of Mosul on Friday, killing two pilots. On Jan. 7, a Black Hawk with 12 aboard crashed in bad weather near the northern city of Tal Afar. All eight soldiers and four civilians aboard were killed.

The causes of those crashes have yet to be announced.

The overall safety record of Army and Marine Corps helicopters has been good, military officials and private analysts say, given the enormous amount of flying in often-harsh conditions.

Army helicopters have logged nearly 1 million flight hours since the Iraq war began in March 2003, with the UH-60 Black Hawk accounting for nearly one-third of the total, according to Army Aviation Warfighting Center records.

Seven Black Hawks have crashed during the war. The second-most heavily used Army helicopter, the AH-64 Apache, has crashed four times and the No. 3 helicopter, the Kiowa Warrior, has gone down seven times. Some were accidents, others were caused by hostile fire and some are still under investigation.

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily...ts/13636918.htm

In "The Philippine Star" today 19 Jan 2006, it was stated that a Fil-Am was one of them. Identified as a Ruel Garcia 34, born in Manila, migrated to Hawaii, married last year after his first tour and now based in Texas. He is part of Two Task Force Ironhorse.

Apache shot down near Baghdad
2 American helicopter pilots confirmed killed

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Sunday that the bodies of two American pilots killed when their Apache helicopter crashed near Baghdad were recovered and the aircraft was probably shot down. Three other U.S. soldiers were reported killed in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

The AH-64D Apache Longbow went down about 5:30 p.m. Saturday during combat operations west of Youssifiyah, about 10 miles southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. command said in a statement.

“The soldiers’ remains were recovered following aircraft recovery operations at the crash site” of the helicopter “which went down due to possible hostile fire,” the statement said.

In political developments, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made a surprise visit to press Iraqi politicians to speed up the formation of the government. The trip came as Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari faced mounting pressure from his fellow Shiites to withdraw his nomination for a second term.

No further details were released on the helicopter crash, but Youssifiyah is located in the “triangle of death,” a religiously mixed area notorious for attacks by Sunni extremists against Shiites traveling between Baghdad and religious shrines south of the capital.

It was the first loss of a U.S. helicopter since three of them crashed in a 10-day period in January, killing a total of 18 American military personnel. At least two of those helicopters were shot down.

The U.S. command also said three more soldiers had been killed — two by a roadside bomb late Saturday in central Baghdad and another from non-hostile related injuries suffered near the northern city of Kirkuk.

The five U.S. deaths brought to at least 2,333 the number of American service members killed since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12096727/

Video Claims to Show Pilot Being Dragged

CAIRO, Egypt - A video posted on the Internet Wednesday in the name of an extremist group claimed to show Iraqi insurgents dragging the burning body of a U.S. pilot on the ground after the crash of an Apache helicopter.

Parts of the video were blurry, and the face of the man being dragged was not shown. His clothes were so tattered it was impossible to tell if he was wearing an American military uniform.

The U.S. military condemned the posting and said that although reports of a Web site video "suggest that terrorists removed part of a body from the crash site, the authenticity of the video cannot be confirmed."

"We are outraged that anyone would create and publish such a despicable video for public exposure," U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington said.

The video, posted by a group calling itself the Shura Council of Mujahedeen, claimed that its military wing had shot down the craft, which the U.S. military said went down Saturday.

According to statements on Islamist Web sites, the Mujahedeen Shura Council was organized in January to consolidate al-Qaida in
Iraq and other insurgent groups. The move was seen as an effort by Iraqi insurgents to lower the profile of al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, whose mass attacks against Shiite civilians have tarnished the image of the insurgents among many Iraqis.

The footage in the video, which also was e-mailed to reporters, was blurry but the helicopter could be seen clearly. However, it was not possible to see if it had U.S. markings.

The video also clearly showed the bloody, burning body of a man being dragged through a field. The extremist group, in audio attached to the video, said he was a U.S. helicopter pilot.

In its statement, the U.S. military said it confirmed that the two pilots in the downed helicopter had died, and it had recovered "all available remains found on the scene, given the catastrophic nature of the crash."

The AH-64D Apache Longbow crashed due to possible hostile fire west of Yousifiyah while conducting a combat air patrol, the military said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060405/ap_on_...elicopter_video

5 Americans killed in Iraq copter crash

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 25 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. security company helicopter crashed Tuesday as it flew over a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in the central Baghdad where insurgents and Iraqi security troops fought a prolonged gunbattle, and a U.S. official said five American civilians on board were killed.

A senior Iraqi military official said the aircraft was shot down, but this was disputed by a U.S. military official in Washington. The Iraqi said the helicopter was hit by a machine gunner over the Fadhil neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, while the U.S. official said there was no indication in initial reports that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot down. The Americans said they did not know what caused the aircraft to crash.

A U.S. official in Baghdad also said there was no information to substantiate reports that the bodies had been shot. All the officials demanded anonymity because the details had not been made public.

Blackwater USA confirmed that five Americans employed by the North Carolina-based company as security professionals were killed. The statement from spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell did not provide identities or any details of the fighting.

The New York Times reported the helicopter went down as it came under attack and plummeted to the pavement through a tangle of electrical wires, but it was unclear if the crash resulted from gunfire, the wires or an effort to land.

Quoting unnamed American officials, the newspaper said the helicopter's four-man crew was killed along with a gunner on a second Blackwater helicopter. It said one military official said that at least four of the victims had suffered gunshot wounds to the head, raising the prospect that some of them had been shot on the ground.

Witnesses in the Fadhil neighborhood told The Associated Press that they saw the helicopter go down after gunmen on the ground opened fire, possibly striking pilot or co-pilot or both. Accounts varied, but all were consistent that at least one person operating the aircraft had been shot and badly hurt before the crash.

The helicopter was believed to have been flying escort above a VIP convoy on the ground as it headed away from the heavily fortified Green Zone to an undisclosed destination.

A report in the Washington Post, also citing unnamed U.S. officials, said one of the Blackwater victims was killed as he traveled with the convoy on the ground.

The Sunni insurgent groups the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the Washington-based SITE Institute, which monitors terrorism Web sites. The authenticity of the claims could not be independently confirmed.

In a report on its Web site, SITE said Ansar also published photos of what it said were the U.S. Embassy badge, credit cards and dog tags of one of the casualties in the attack.

Among the dead was Arthur Laguna, a 52-year-old pilot for Blackwater who previously served in the Army and the California National Guard, his mother, Lydia Laguna, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday night.

She said she received a call from her other son, also a Blackwater pilot in Baghdad, notifying her of Arthur's death. Laguna said she was expecting to receive more details of the crash Wednesday.

"I will hear more from my other son tomorrow," Laguna said from her home in Rio Linda, Calif.

Blackwater USA provides security for State Department officials in Iraq, trains military units from around the world, and works for corporate clients.

"These untimely deaths are a reminder of the extraordinary circumstances under which our professionals voluntarily serve to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people," the Blackwater statement said.

Katy Helvenston, mother of Scott Helvenston, a Blackwater employee who died in March 2004, said Tuesday's crash "just breaks my heart."

"I'm so sick of these kids dying," she said.

Helvenston was killed, along with Jerko "Jerry" Zovko, Wesley J.K. Batalona, and Michael R. Teague, when a frenzied mob of insurgents ambushed a supply convoy they were escorting through Fallujah. The insurgents burned and mutilated the guards and strung two of the bodies from a bridge. The gruesome scene was filmed and broadcast worldwide, leading the U.S. military to launch a three-week siege of Fallujah.

Before Tuesday's crash, at least 22 employees of Blackwater Security Consulting or Blackwater USA had died in Iraq as a result of war-related violence, according to the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks foreign troop fatalities in Iraq. Of those, 20 were Americans, and two were Polish.

The crash of the small surveillance helicopter, believed to be a version of the Hughes Defender that was developed during the Vietnam War, was the second associated with the U.S. war effort in Iraq in four days.

A U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter went down Saturday northeast of Baghdad, killing all 12 service members on board. The American military in Baghdad has refused to confirm a report by a
Pentagon official that debris at the crash site indicated the helicopter was shot out of the air by a surface-to-air missile.

Relatively few U.S. aircraft have been shot down during the war despite hundreds, perhaps thousands of flights above Iraq. Helicopters typically flow fast and low over populated areas, making it extremely difficult for militant fighters to draw a bead with shoulder-fired missiles. U.S. fighter jets normally fly at very high altitudes and usually can be heard screaming through the skies but remain invisible to the naked eye.

Civilian aircraft that serve Baghdad International Airport use avoidance techniques that included landing in a steep, circular descent from nearly straight overhead the runways. Takeoffs are achieved with the same technique until passenger jets are out of missile range.

The Blackwater aircraft was at least the 14th helicopter to go down since the war began in March 2003. The worst incident occurred Jan. 26, 2005, when a U.S. transport helicopter crashed in a sandstorm in western Iraq, killing 30 Marines and a U.S. sailor.

According to insurance claims on file at the Department of Labor, 770 civilian contractors have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, through December 31, 2006. Additionally, 7,761 civilian contractors have been injured in the same time period, according to claims on file.

Hours before
President Bush's annual State of the Union address, the U.S. military announced three more troop deaths, a Marine killed Sunday and two soldiers killed on Monday. That raised the three-day toll since Saturday to 31.

Iraqi police and morgue officials, meanwhile, reported at least 57 people were killed in sectarian violence nationwide on Tuesday, including 27 bodies, most showing signs of torture, that were dumped in Baghdad.

The U.S. military also reported it had detained four suspects in the Jan. 20 sneak attack on U.S. forces during a security meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

The statement said the four were captured two days afterward on a tip from a resident of the city south of Baghdad. It said the four were found in a house near where SUVs used in the attack had been abandoned after the insurgent fighters fled.

Before the assault, the insurgents, who wore American-style military uniforms, were waved through a checkpoint at the outskirts of Karbala by security officials. Authorities apparently were fooled by the uniforms and the fact that the attackers were traveling in vehicles normally used by official U.S. or Iraqi convoys.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070124/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq