Four U.S. helicopters were hit by groundfire from resistance fighters in two separate attacks near Fallujah, but their crews were able to return to base, the U.S. military said Saturday.
The two Kiowa OH-58 helicopters were hit during an attempted ambush in Karma, a town some 10 kms northeast of Fallujah, the military said, according to The AP.
Both choppers were damaged but their pilots managed to fly back to the U.S. base at Taji, some 20 kms north of Baghdad. No crew members were injured.
Late Friday night, two Apache helicopters were hit by small arms fire on a patrol southeast of Fallujah, near the village of Zaidan. There too, the pilots, who were not injured, managed to fly the helicopters back to Baghdad International Airport.
Earlier, resistance fighters shot down a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Taji, injuring three crew members, the US Army said.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi government rushed reinforcements to the key city of Mosul after police fled and armed men brandishing automatic weapons seized control of the streets.
Residents reported, according to The AP that police disappeared from the city, as gunmen carried out several actions, including an attack on the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party and the assassination of the head of the city's anti-crime task force.
Capt. Angela Bowman, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Mosul headquarters, said "some of these attacks are in support of the resistance in Fallujah." Responding to the crisis, Iraqi authorities dismissed Mosul's police chief after local officials reported that officers were abandoning their stations without firing a shot. (albawaba.com)
