U.S. F16 Crashes In Iraq, Curfew Lifted
The Associated Press
By Sameer N. Yacoub BAGHDAD, Iraq — A U.S. Air Force jet with one pilot on board crashed Monday in Anbar province, a hotbed of Iraq’s Sunni-Arab insurgency, and a witness said other U.S. warplanes rushed to the crash site and circled above it. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived for an official visit in Iran, where he is expected to seek its help in preventing Iraq’s sectarian violence from sliding into an all-out civil war. His departure was delayed by a three-day curfew, which the government lifted on Monday. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki prepared for his summit meeting with President Bush this week in Jordan, Britain said it expects to withdraw thousands of its 7,000 military personnel from Iraq by the end of next year, and Poland and Italy announced the impending withdrawal of their remaining troops. The F-16CG jet was supporting coalition ground forces when it went down Monday afternoon in Anbar province, about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said in a brief statement. The statement had no information about the suspected cause of the crash or the fate of the pilot. Mohammed Al-Obeidi, who lives in the nearby town of Karmah, said by telephone that he saw the jet flying up and down erratically before it nose-dived and exploded in a field. He said other U.S. warplanes rushed to the area and circled above the wreckage. Separately, police and witnesses said U.S. soldiers shot and killed 11 civilians and wounded five on Sunday night in the Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya. The U.S. military said it had no record of any American military operation in the area. “We were sitting inside our house when the Americans showed up and started firing at homes. They killed many people and burned some houses,” said one of the witnesses, a man with bandages on his head who was being treated at Imam Ali Hospital in the Shiite slum of Sadr City. The police and witnesses spoke with Associated Press Television News on condition of anonymity to protect their own security. On Monday, about 250 attended a memorial service outside the hospital’s morgue for the 11 victims, saying it was being conducted in the slum because the dead had been followers of the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The cleric and his Madhi Army militia are both based in Sadr City. The U.S. command also said three of its soldiers were killed and two wounded in Baghdad on Sunday, the day that Iraq’s government began to lift the curfew by allowing Iraqis to leave their homes on foot to shop at their local fruit and vegetable markets. The curfew was imposed Thursday after suspected Sunni-Arab insurgents used bombs and mortars to kill more than 200 people in Sadr City in the worst attack by militants in the war. Talabani had been scheduled to visit neighboring Iran on Saturday, but he had to postpone his trip because Baghdad’s airport was closed to commercial flights as part of the curfew. The U.S. wants Iran’s mostly Shiite government to do more to help Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government stem a surge in sectarian violence. Talabani is a member of Iraq’s Kurdish minority, but he had close ties with Iranian officials before Saddam Hussein was driven out by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The Bush administration has accused Tehran of arming and providing logistical assistance to Shiite militias, and British Defense Secretary Des Browne said Monday that Iran’s behavior in Iraq remains a deep concern. “Support from within Iran goes to groups who are attacking our forces, but also to groups who are simply fueling the sectarian violence,” Browne said in an address to the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran is “ready to help” calm Iraq’s fighting. In other violence, gunmen opened fire on a crowded central Baghdad street on Monday morning, killing six Iraqis and wounding three.
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