The Daily Background

Last Wednesday, I wrote a post entitled “Iraqi Insurgents getting better at shooting down helicopters?” From that post:

One helicopter belonged to the US military and 12 soldiers were killed when it crashed on Saturday.
[…]
In addition, a helicopter belonging to the private security firm Blackwater was shot down today while on a mission for the US government.

The bodies of all four people on board were recovered by US forces who discovered that they had not died in the crash- but instead had been apparently shot in the head after landing. Further, a second helicopter belonging to Blackwater came under fire [without crashing] around the same time, with one person killed.

Yesterday, a third American helicopter was shot down in Iraq, with two Americans killed in the crash. Reuters says that “A Reuters reporter saw a U.S. helicopter come down after a burst of machinegun fire and he saw a trail of smoke from the helicopter before it came down… A U.S. statement said the helicopter “went down” but did not say whether it was shot down.”

Filed under: Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog