Insurgents Kill Dozens after Copter Crash

By Robert H. Reid
The Associated Press

Thursday 19 January 2006

Baghdad - The horror began after American and Iraqi forces cordoned off part of a highway north of Baghdad following the deadly crash of a U.S. helicopter.

With traffic directed onto narrow dirt roads, insurgents turned the area into a killing field. They set up makeshift checkpoints, grabbed motorists and slaughtered about 40 over a two-day period, police said.

A local tribal leader, Mohammed al-Khazraji, said he saw "dozens of corpses" strewn over the ground yesterday, victims of the insurgents' culling.

Two pilots died in Monday's crash of the U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter near Mishahda, 25 miles north of Baghdad.

"Hundreds of people were detained by the militants, and many were killed all because of a helicopter crash that killed two Americans," al-Khazraji said.

Thirty people were dragged from their cars yesterday and shot dead in farming areas in Nibaei, a town near Dujail, about 50 miles north of the capital, said police Lt. Qahtan al-Hashmawi.

"Most of the victims were Iraqi policemen, soldiers or commandos," he said.

Another 11 men were lined up and killed Tuesday and dumped about a mile from Nibaei, said another policemen, Capt. Ali al-Hashmawi.

The killings marked an increase in violence as authorities prepare to announce the results this week of the Dec. 15 election. U.S. and Iraqi officials expect more attacks as religious and ethnic groups jockey for power in the new government.

In the boldest attack, gunmen opened fire on a convoy of the mobile telephone company Iraqna, killing six security guards and three drivers in the Nafaq al-Shurta district of western Baghdad.

The attackers seized two engineers from Kenya, said Naguib Sawiris, chairman of the Egyptian communications firm that controls Iraqna.

In the southern city of Basra, two American civilians were killed in a roadside bombing. They worked for the Texas-based security company DynCorp and were training Iraqi police. A third American was seriously wounded in the attack, the U.S. Embassy said.

An Associated Press photographer at the scene said two four-wheel-drive vehicles had been targeted. The area was surrounded by heavily armed British forces, whose main base in Iraq is in Basra.

The killings occurred as a joint American-Iraqi investigation was under way to find Jill Carroll, the 28-year-old freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who has been abducted. She was seen in a video aired Tuesday by Al-Jazeera television.

Al-Jazeera said the silent 20-second video included a threat to kill Carroll in 72 hours unless U.S. authorities release all women detainees in Iraq. U.S. officials said that eight women were in security detention and that none had been freed as of last night.

President Bush ignored shouted questions yesterday about what his administration is doing to find Carroll. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said her safe return was "a priority for the administration," but refused to say more "because of the sensitivity of the situation."

David Cook, Washington bureau chief for the Monitor, said yesterday that Carroll's work has demonstrated she is respectful of Arab culture and people, and that the newspaper has shown it treats different cultures and viewpoints fairly.

He said "the Monitor is undertaking strenuous efforts on Jill's behalf... taking advantage of every opportunity we have at our disposal."

Iraqi officials also confirmed that 35 men rejected for membership in the Iraqi police were abducted Monday by masked gunmen, who stopped their bus en route from Baghdad to Samarra north of the capital.

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