[Centraal] Irak na de oorlog - deel 37 : Irak staat op instorten

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From correspondents in Baghdad
February 22, 2007 07:34am
Article from: Agence France-PresseFont size: + -

A US army Black Hawk transport helicopter appears to have been shot down in Iraq today, the eighth such aircraft to go down in just over a month.

"The initial indications appear that it was brought down by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said today.

A senior spokesman said earlier that no one on board had been hurt in what was initially described as a "hard landing" north of Baghdad."Initial reports are that there were nine people on board. An accompanying helicopter has already landed and picked those personnel up. They're all OK," Major General William Caldwell said.

Iraqi police officers said the chopper came down in fields near the town of Tarmiyah, the scene two days ago of a fierce battle between US troops and insurgents, some 30 kilometres north of the capital.

Seven US helicopters, including two operated by a private security firm, have been lost in Iraq since January 20.

Most of them were shot down, sparking speculation that insurgents are using new tactics or weapons.

The last was a Marine CH-47 transport helicopter that was shot down on February 7, killing all seven onboard.

In all, 27 people have died in the eight crashes, which include two private helicopters that belonged to the Blackwater security agency.

Two of the aircraft lost were Apache gunships with cutting-edge defences that were nonetheless hit by fire from the ground.

The worst US chopper crash in Iraq involved two Black Hawk transports near Mosul in the north of the country on November 15, 2003, and killed 17 soldiers.

Two weeks earlier, 16 soldiers died when their CH-47 Chinook was shot down near Fallujah, west of the capital.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Specialized Al-Qaeda cells are believed to be responsible for a spate of shootdowns of US military helicopters in Iraq and two insurgents have been captured in connection with them, a top US commander said Thursday.

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the number two commander in Iraq, said insurgents appear to have ambushed two or three of the eight helicopters downed since January 20.

"I think they probably have been trying to do this for a long time, but my guess is they have a cell out there that is somewhat effective," Odierno told reporters here via video link from Iraq.

The general said an insurgent captured about a week ago had confessed to being involved in one of the helicopter shoot downs.

Raids launched over the past few nights "got into another part of a cell who might have shot down one of the aircraft," he said.

He said two people linked to the shoot downs have been captured but would not comment further.

The cells were associated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a militant Islamic Sunni group, he said.

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VS-militair krijgt 100 jaar na moordpartij Irak

Uitgegeven: 23 februari 2007 05:57
Laatst gewijzigd: 23 februari 2007 05:57
WASHINGTON - Een rechter van een Amerikaanse krijgsraad heeft donderdag een Amerikaanse militair tot 100 jaar celstraf veroordeeld voor de verkrachting van een Iraaks meisje en de moord op haar en drie van haar familieleden. Dat meldden Amerikaanse media.

De 24-jarige sergeant had schuld bekend om de doodstraf te ontlopen. Hij kan wel vervroegd vrijkomen. Mogelijk al na tien jaar. Een andere militair in de zaak werd in november tot 90 jaar celstraf veroordeeld.

In totaal moeten vier Amerikaanse militairen zich voor de krijgsraad verantwoorden voor de slachtpartij in maart 2006 in de stad Mahmudiya. Zij verkrachtten het meisje. Daarna vermoordden zij de vader, moeder en het zusje om vervolgens het meisje te doden en haar lijk in brand te steken.

Een vijfde verdachte in de zaak moet voor een civiele rechtbank verschijnen omdat hij al oneervol uit het leger ontslagen was toen het incident aan het licht kwam.

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Sunnis - not Shiites - biggest threat to U.S. troops

WASHINGTON - Sunni Muslim insurgents remain by far the biggest threat to American troops in Iraq, despite recent U.S. claims that Iran is providing Shiite Muslim militia groups with a new type of roadside bomb, a review of American casualty reports shows.

While U.S. military officials have held briefings to publicize their concerns about the potent bombs known as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) or penetrators, casualty reports suggest that such weapons in the hands of Shiite militias are responsible for a relatively small number of American deaths.

U.S. officials have said that attacks with such weapons increased 150 percent in the past year. But a review of bombings by location shows that less than 10 percent of attacks that killed at least two American service members in the past 14 months were in areas where Shiite militias are dominant.

Those reports show that fewer than half the bomb attacks on heavily armored U.S. vehicles such as Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were in areas where Shiite militias dominate.

While it's difficult to know which armed group planted a bomb, analysts say the casualty numbers show that U.S. officials are exaggerating the importance of EFPs, which military officials say have been used only by Shiites.

"There were relatively few American deaths from explosively formed penetrators until recently, but you can say the same thing about attacks on helicopters or chlorine attacks," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Va. "The fact of the matter is that the insurgents, both Sunni and Shiite, are becoming a lot more sophisticated in their tactics. Explosively formed penetrators are only one part of that, and they are not a particularly important part."

Pentagon officials say the issue is important because the Iranian government appears to be involved.

"I think the issue is not whether or not materials and supplies are coming from Iran - they are - but rather how far up the Iranian leadership is involved," said Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon's chief spokesman.

U.S. military officials accuse Iran of supplying Shiite militants with EFPs, which fire a molten slug of metal that can punch through the thickest American armor, including tanks and other vehicles designed to withstand heavy blasts. The officials say the bombs have killed at least 170 U.S. and allied service members and wounded more than 620 since they were first discovered on the battlefield in mid-2004.

Those officials have declined to provide other information about the bombs' use, including when and where the explosions that killed Americans took place. They say that such information would tip off the enemy to its successes.

Roadside bombs have killed at least 1,150 Americans since the war began, according to Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, 496 died from Dec. 1, 2005, through Jan. 31 of this year.

U.S. military officials point to the discovery of a weapons cache in a Shiite village near Baqouba, about 40 miles from Baghdad, as the latest evidence that Iran is supplying Shiite militants with weapons.

On Monday, the Defense Department posted a video of the discovery on the Web and American officers in Baghdad displayed weapons seized in the raid, including rocket-propelled grenades, 120 mm mortars and 122 mm rockets that they said bore markings that proved the weapons were made in Iran last year.

The find also included artillery rounds, land mines, detonation cord, triggering devices, C-4 explosives and more than 140 metal discs, which U.S. military officers said were components for making EFPs.

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said earlier this week that the weapons clearly were linked to Iran.

"The mortar tubes were made in Iran," he said. "We know that the pieces of the explosively formed projectiles, the machine pieces, were made in Iran. So we know they're being developed and brought into Iraq."

Odierno said on CNN this week that he was convinced that the EFP materials were coming from Iran.

"We have tried to see people replicate them here in Iraq, and they have not been able to do it," he said. "The machining required, the materials that are required, we think absolutely are coming from Iran, and you saw the big cache we found just the other day - almost 140 of these could be produced from that cache that we found."

Odierno said Iran's al Quds commando force was involved either in training or supplying Shiite groups, but the full extent of the Iranian government's involvement remains unclear.

Analysts say the evidence is far from clear that Iran could be the only source for the bomb components.

"Explosively formed penetrators are not some exclusive franchise for the Iranians," Thompson said. "They are fairly common around the world."

Explosively formed penetrators are also known as shaped charges. The warheads were developed after World War I to penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles. Rocket-propelled grenades and antitank missiles are conventional examples. Shaped charges also are used in the oil and gas industry.

John Pike, the executive director of GlobalSecurity.org, an online clearinghouse for military, intelligence and homeland-security information, said that while designing a shaped charge would require expertise, fabricating the devices was simpler, requiring only skill in using metal-machining tools.

"These are not factory-produced munitions," he said.

Asked who'd have the expertise to manufacture a shaped charge, Pike cited "people who had worked with explosives in the petroleum industry." In Iraq, he said, "there would be a fair number of those."

Roadside bombs have been the No. 1 killer of U.S. service members in Iraq for years, though the numbers were dropping last year compared with the year before until October, when they shot up sharply, according to the Coalition Casualty Count Web site. December was the deadliest month of the war for roadside bombs, with 67 American deaths, nearly half of which were in Baghdad.

Overall, however, the number of U.S. deaths from IEDs in 2006 was up less than 6 percent from the year before; 419 last year compared with 397 in 2005, according to Coalition Casualty Count.

The spike in the last quarter of the year corresponded with an increased use of explosively formed projectiles during the same period, according to American defense officials. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said on the Senate floor recently that 90 percent of the EFPs detonated in Iraq had been used in Baghdad.

U.S. military officials say EFPs are more dangerous than other types of roadside bombs because they typically produce more casualties.

American casualty reports show that the deadliest roadside-bomb attacks of the war have occurred in predominantly Sunni areas or areas with mixed ethnic and religious populations.

Of the 81 roadside bomb attacks that killed two or more soldiers from December 2005 through January 2007, one-quarter occurred in western Iraq, which is predominantly Sunni, and nearly two-thirds took place in Baghdad and other ethnically and religiously mixed areas, the reports show. Fewer than 10 percent were in predominantly Shiite areas.

Of the 10 fatal bomb attacks on M1 Abrams tanks in the same period, four were in Baghdad and four in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni area. One each occurred in Balad and Taji, which have large Sunni populations and big U.S. bases.

Of the 11 fatal attacks on Bradley Fighting Vehicles during that period, four were in Baghdad. Four were in Taji, and one each occurred in Ramadi, Balad and al Muqdadiyah, all of which have large concentrations of Sunnis.

The three worst attacks on Bradleys were in Taji: Three American soldiers died in a roadside bombing Feb. 22, three in an attack last April 11 and four in a bombing Aug. 27.

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al Qaeda-linked group says killed 18 Iraqi policemen
Fri Mar 2, 2007 12:21PM EST
DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-linked Iraqi militant group said on Friday it had killed 18 policemen it seized in Diyala province after the government ignored demands it made for their release.

"The Islamic State in Iraq has given the infidel government of (Nuri) al-Maliki 24 hours to respond to its demands ... but it (the government) did not give any importance for their blood," said the self-styled group in a statement.

"We will show the film of the implementation (of the execution ruling) soon, God willing," it said in the statement posted on the Internet.

Iraqi police found the bodies of 14 policemen shot in the head hours after the group showed pictures of the 18 men it said were seized to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month.

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Qaeda-led militants storm Iraq jail, free 140

MOSUL, Iraq, March 6 (Reuters) - Dozens of al Qaeda-led militants stormed an Iraqi jail in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday and freed up to 140 prisoners in one of the biggest prison breaks since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, police said.

As many as 300 militants led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, attacked Mosul's northwestern Badoush prison just after sunset in the ethnically mixed city and overwhelmed police, who were forced to call the U.S. military for backup, officials said.

Hisham al-Hamdani, a member of the Mosul provincial government, said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi took part in the attack himself. The Islamic State in Iraq is a body set up by al Qaeda's Iraq wing and other Sunni militant groups in October.

Most of the prisoners were believed to be insurgents, police said.

It was unclear if there were any clashes between gunmen and police during the incident.

Saddam Hussein's nephew, Ayham Sabawi, escaped the same prison in December after he was accused of financing the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces and the Shi'ite-led government.