A commercial helicopter was shot down by missile fire north of the Iraqi capital on Thursday, the Bulgarian defence ministry said. All nine people on board were killed, including three Bulgarians, officials said.
Also, after a week of stepped-up violence, the country’s most feared terror group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility on Thursday for a suicide car bombing that targeted interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s convoy but did not harm the Iraqi leader.
The MI-8 helicopter — chartered from Washington-based SkyLink Air and Logistic Support — went down about 20km north of Baghdad, the United States embassy said.
”The helicopter was shot by missile fire around 2pm local time,” a Bulgarian defence ministry statement said. The ministry did not provide the nationalities of the six others killed in the crash.
The US military said the helicopter was contracted by the US Department of Defence. At the Pentagon in Washington, a senior defence official said there were six civilian contract workers aboard the aircraft. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he did not know the nationalities of the six or their employers.
The attack against Allawi’s convoy occurred on Wednesday, a day of multiple bombings and shootings in the embattled capital and elsewhere that killed at least 13 people and wounded 21.
They included an Australian security contract worker and two other foreign nationals who died when unidentified assailants fired at their vehicle in Baghdad, Australian officials said in Sydney on Thursday.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for several of the attacks, including the one on Allawi, in statements that surfaced on websites known for their militant content.
”Allawi escaped, but if one arrow missed its target, there are many others in the quiver,” one of the statements said. It was not possible to verify the claims.
In a separate attack, a roadside bomb exploded on the highway leading to Baghdad’s airport on Thursday, heavily damaging three SUVs carrying civilians. Police Captain Hamid Ali said two foreigners were killed and three wounded in the burning vehicles. But US embassy and military officials could not confirm the casualties.
Lately, much of Iraq’s violence has occurred in the capital, as political leaders struggle to agree on a new Cabinet from the country’s complex mix of Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds, nearly three months after Iraqis elected a 275-seat National Assembly.
Fishermen identified
Meanwhile, the Iraqi defence ministry identified 19 bullet-riddled bodies found on Wednesday in Haditha, 220km north-west of Baghdad, as fishermen, not soldiers as initially rumoured.
Investigations indicated the men had come from the southern Diwaniya and Najaf provinces to fish in Tharthar lake when they were captured by insurgents, taken to the soccer stadium at nearby Haditha and shot, said Saleh Sarhan, the ministry’s chief spokesperson. He did not say how the victims had been identified or why they might have been captured.
Residents heard gunshots on Wednesday and rushed to the stadium, where they said they found the 19 bodies slumped against a bloodstained wall. All appeared to have been gunned down, witnesses said.
Residents first said they believed the victims — all men in civilian clothes — were soldiers abducted by insurgents as they headed home for a holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. But residents and an Iraqi reporter saw no military identification on the bodies.
In October, insurgents ambushed and killed about 50 unarmed Iraqi soldiers as they headed home from a US military training camp north-east of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, relatives of Iraqis who have disappeared in a Sunni militant stronghold known as the ”Triangle of Death” gathered at a police station on Thursday to examine photographs of the bodies of dozens of Iraqis that officials said were pulled from the Tigris River in recent weeks.
”My cousin was kidnapped by terrorists, and he has been missing for two weeks,” said Jawad Hashim Shael, as he scanned photos handed out at the station in the town of Suwayra. ”We have searched all nearby areas, but we still have no information about his whereabouts.”
On Wednesday, interim President Jalal Talabani announced the recovery of the more than 50 bodies, saying the discovery from the river was proof of claims that dozens were abducted from an area south of the capital despite a fruitless search by Iraqi forces.
Talabani did not say when or where the bodies were pulled from the river, but he said all had been identified as hostages.
”Terrorists committed crimes there. It is not true to say there were no hostages. There were. They were killed, and they threw the bodies into the Tigris,” Talabani told reporters. ”We have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes.”
Shi’ite leaders and government officials claimed last week that Sunni militants had abducted as many as 100 Shi’ites from the Madain area, 20km south-east of Baghdad. But when Iraqi forces moved into the town of 1 000 families, they found no captives, and residents said they had seen no evidence anyone had been seized.
Madain and Suwayra are both located in the ”Triangle of Death”, a region south of Baghdad where there have been numerous retaliatory kidnappings. Police and health officials said victims are sometimes killed and dumped in the river.
As summer approaches and temperatures start to rise, bodies have been floating to the surface, said Dr Falah al-Permani of the Swera district health department. He said as many as 50 bodies have been recovered over the past three weeks, but it was not clear whether they were the bodies referred to by Talabani. — Sapa-AP