Reuters News Service
Mosul, IRAQ (RUETERS) — Two Wisconsin soldiers were killed in Iraq Saturday when U.S. helicopters collided under enemy fire.
According to the Department of Defense, Sgt. Warren S. Hansen, age 36, of Clintonville, and Spc. Eugene A. Uhl III, age 21, of Amherst, were among the 17 soldiers who died in the crash.
U.S. troops retrieved bodies and wreckage Sunday when two Black Hawk helicopters crashed under fire in the deadliest single incident for U.S. forces since they invaded Iraq.
The U.S. military said the helicopters collided Saturday evening after one was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. But the official version of events remained unclear. The army said an investigation was underway.
“We are moving bodies and debris from the scene now,” Major Trey Cate of the 101st Airborne Division told reporters near the crash site Sunday. He said 17 soldiers had been killed and five wounded.
One Black Hawk slammed into the roof of a house in Mosul’s Bab Sinjar neighborhood. The second hit a school building. Somehow, neither appeared to have inflicted civilian casualties in the crowded residential area near the city center.
Fawwaz Saleh, a 36-year-old lawyer who lives two doors away from the house hit by one of the helicopters, said gunfire had been heard in the area before the Black Hawks moved in.
“One of them started hovering at a fixed spot above, very close. This drowned out all the other noise, then we heard a loud explosion which shook our windows, and then the sound of rotor blades going slower,” he said.
“Then they stopped and we heard a loud crash. We rushed to the house and took the women and children outside. The family was too terrified to go onto the roof.
“I saw rotor blades sticking through the roof. We saw one of the pilots pulling a soldier from the cockpit.”
A U.S. officer at the scene soon after the crashes said a rocket-propelled grenade had hit the tail rotor of one Black Hawk. Witnesses said it then collided with the second.
“I was watching TV when I heard a large explosion,” said local man Mohammad Badran. “I looked outside the window and saw two helicopters. One was flying low and was on fire. The other was higher up. The first one climbed and hit the higher one.”
The latest disaster for U.S. forces, involving their single heaviest loss of life since the Iraq conflict began, occurred only hours after Washington set the country on a swifter passage to self-rule in a bid to calm Iraqi anger at occupation.
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that U.S. forces would not begin leaving when a transitional government takes power in June under a plan unveiled Saturday by Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
Three U.S. helicopters have been brought down in the past three weeks, killing a total of 22 soldiers. A suicide attack Wednesday killed 19 Italians in the deadliest assault on non-U.S. forces in postwar Iraq.
-Michelle Orris contributed to this report
