Insurgents in Iraq shot down a commercial helicopter chartered by the United States defence department on Thursday, killing all 11 people on board, including six American military contractors.
A rocket-propelled grenade hit the Russian-built Mi-8 helicopter near the town of Tarmiya, 40km north of Baghdad, just before 2pm local time, according to US and Bulgarian military officials.
Television pictures showed two charred bodies lying near the burning wreckage of what was believed to be the first civilian aircraft shot down in two years of resistance to US-led multinational forces. The Islamic Army in Iraq, a leading militant group, claimed responsibility in an internet statement.
The three crew members were Bulgarian, six passengers worked for the US military contractor Blackwater and two were Filipino guards. A Canadian-based company, SkyLink Aviation, had contracted the helicopter, which was owned by a Bulgarian company, Heli Air. It was heading for Tikrit.
Insurgents have shot down several military helicopters. Ten British soldiers died in January when a C-130 Hercules transport plane crashed near Baghdad, but the cause remains unclear.
Thursday’s attack came as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the militant group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for Wednesday night’s assassination attempt on the outgoing Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, and vowed to try again.
”A lion from the martyrs’ brigade of the al-Qaeda organisation … attacked the headquarters of the apostate and ally of the Jews and Christians after we received information from the intelligence service inside the enemy,” said a statement on an Islamist website.
”Many were killed but Allawi was saved. But if this time the arrow did not pierce him, we have other arrows in our quiver.”
The authenticity of the statement could not be confirmed and analysts cautioned that it might suit homegrown resistance groups to let the Jordanian-born Zarqawi claim some of their attacks as his own.
Multiple bombings and shootings on Thursday killed at least 15 people, including the 11 helicopter casualties, and wounded 21. A bomb on Baghdad’s airport road destroyed an armoured convoy of foreign security contractors, killing two.
Gunmen killed an Australian contractor in a separate incident.
On Wednesday, 19 men were abducted and shot dead in a football stadium in Haditha, 224km north-west of Baghdad.
Hopes that a Cabinet would be formed on Thursday, restoring some impetus to the political process, foundered over more haggling between the cleric-backed Shia coalition and the Kurdish bloc which won the election. – Guardian Unlimited Â