President George Bush yesterday vowed America would ”never run” from its ”vital” mission in Iraq, in the wake of a missile attack on a US army helicopter that killed 16 soldiers and wounded 21.
The attack near the Sunni nationalist stronghold of Falluja was the worst day for the US military since March, bringing home the strength of anti-American forces in Iraq.
The threat was underlined last night when the US military announced the death of another US soldier in an attack involving a homemade bomb near the northern Iraqi town of Tikrit. A second soldier was wounded in the attack.
Bush did not directly refer to the attack on the helicopter in his speech to Alabama businessmen, but he restated his resolve to defeat the resistance.
”The mission in Iraq is vital,” he said. ”The enemy in Iraq believes America will run. That’s why they’re willing to kill innocent civilians, relief workers, coalition troops. America will never run.”
However, the attack had a profound impact in Washington, where US officials referred to the fighting as an ”insurgency”, an organised armed opposition.
In response, the Pentagon was urgently dispatching more military intelligence analysts to Iraq to help determine who is behind the at tacks. US troops are uncertain how tightly linked Saddam Hussein loyalists are with foreign ”jihadist” fighters who have infiltrated Iraq.
The US is also considering recalling units of the Iraqi army that was disbanded by the occupation authority in May. The decision to do so had been widely criticised at the time as short-sighted and likely to swell the ranks of the enemies of the coalition.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, denied that trying to reconstitute the Iraqi army represented a u-turn. The army had largely disbanded itself, he said, adding that the total number of Iraqis involved in the new national army and police force was now 100 000 and would be 200 000 ”by next year”.
Rumsfeld said: ”It will be Iraqis that will be out killing and capturing the remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime, as they are today.”
An inquiry was under way yesterday into what kind of missile had downed the Chinook helicopter, which had been ferrying troops back to Baghdad to begin their leave outside Iraq. Witnesses said it had been attacked by insurgents hiding in a date grove.
Last night a spokesman for the US military hospital in Germany where the survivors were being treated said five of the US soldiers were still in a ”very critical condition”.
A further six remained in intensive care, and five were recovering in a general ward.
”There has been surgery going on throughout the day. Some of the kids are just being stabilised. Five of them are very seriously injured,” said Dan Unger, spokesman for the Landstuhl medical centre, in Germany, the biggest US military hospital in Europe.
”Since it was a helicopter crash the soldiers are suffering from everything — including burns, shrapnel, and concussion injuries.”
Nearly 30 injured soldiers arrived at Ramstein air base, near Munich, before dawn yesterday aboard a C-17 transport aircraft. Fourteen were taken on stretchers to the nearby hospital, while others walked.
At the crash site, six miles south of Falluja, chunks of charred and twisted wreckage were lifted on to a truck, as soldiers stood guard.
Meanwhile, the toll on Iraqi civilians also continued to mount. A mortar attack in the northern city of Kirkuk late on Sunday killed two people and wounded six. An 11-year-old Iraqi boy was reported killed near Falluja, caught in crossfire between US troops and insurgents.
In Baquba, north-east of Baghdad, a man was killed and seven were wounded in a roadside bomb attack on a bus, apparently aimed at members of the civilian defence corps who had just driven by.
A bomb exploded outside a hotel used by pilgrims in the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala on Monday, killing at least three people, officials said. They said the bomb appeared to have been planted in a nearby car and had destroyed much of the front of the hotel.
”The enemies of freedom will stop at nothing,” said Paul Bremer, the coalition’s chief civilian administrator, on Sunday night. ”At the beginning of last week they attacked Iraqi civilians and then they targeted US soldiers,” he said. – Guardian Unlimited Â