The U.S. military reported today that two of its helicopters had crashed in Iraq during the early morning hours, causing the death of four soldiers. American authorities claimed that the two collided in mid-air, and that the cause of this collision was accident, not Iraqi resistance activity. They also made the impression that the two helicopters were of the Blackhawk type, which is used for transport. They refused to say where the crash occurred or what activity the helicopters were engaged in.
Local sources in Iraq claimed that the helicopters crashed near Kirkuk, a famous center of resistance north of Baghdad. Iraq national police and U.S. troops sealed off the area. They said that the incident occurred between 2 and 3 in the morning, and that they heard several explosions around this time, although these sounds could have been caused by the crash and do not necessarily indicate an attack on the helicopters.
One observer indicated that the crash report was very unusual, because if two Blackhawk helicopters were involved as the U.S. Military claims then they would have carried at the least eight crewmembers in both machines, but only four were reported . He suggested several possible explanations, including that the aircraft involved were actually attack helicopters, which carry only two crew each, that only one helicopter had crashed (which makes the claim of a mid-air collision highly unlikely), or that there was a far higher casualty list from the incident, which the Americans were deliberately hiding.
