Two-star general ahead of Black Hawk crash
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Maj. Gen. Thomas Romig, Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army
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CNN's Nic Robertson on the deaths of six U.S. soldiers in a Black Hawk copter crash.
CNN's Bill Hemmer speaks with Lebanese-American businessman Imad Hage about what he says were Iraqi offers to make major prewar concessions.
CNN's Ben Wedeman on relations between U.S. troops and Iraqis in Fallujah.
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TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- A U.S. Army two-star general was aboard a Black Hawk helicopter flying just ahead of one that crashed Friday, killing all six soldiers aboard.
The U.S. military remains uncertain about whether either helicopter was the target of an attack but the two helicopters were in range of rocket-propelled grenades as they flew along the marshy banks of the Euphrates River in deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
Witnesses said a rocket hit the second helicopter before it crashed at high speed. The cause of the crash remains under investigation. (On the Scene: Nic Robertson)
Maj. Gen. Thomas Romig, the Judge Advocate General of the Army, was aboard the lead helicopter, sources said.
Romig, the Army's top lawyer, is not based in Iraq. He was visiting Iraq on an undisclosed mission. CNN is told he is safe.
A successful attack on a two-star general could have given anti-U.S. insurgents a morale boost.
A near-miss occurred October 26 when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spent the night at the al Rashid hotel the same night it was hit by rockets. (Full story)
It's impossible to know whether Iraqi insurgents were aware of the high-ranking officials in either incident.
Still, sources said Friday's incident raises troubling questions about whether insurgents knew of the general's whereabouts. Details of his trip were never released publicly.
Hours after the helicopter went down, U.S. forces pounded the area near Saddam's ancestral home with bombs and mortar shells.
Two F-16s flew low over the marshy area near the crash site and dropped at least two 500-pound bombs, CNN's Nic Robertson reported.
Dozens of artillery shells, mortars and howitzers rained down on the area, Robertson said, beginning late Friday and going into early Saturday.
Black Hawk crash among other violent incidents
The Black Hawk slammed into the ground at about 9:20 a.m. (1:20 a.m. EST) Friday. The lead Black Hawk didn't notice any hostile fire beforehand, Army spokesman Maj. Josslyn Aberle said.
The helicopter was engulfed in flames after it crashed, according to reports from the second aircraft. The Black Hawks were en route to Camp Ironhorse, the main U.S. military base in the north-central town of Tikrit.
The crash comes a day after a somber memorial service for 15 U.S. troops killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter went down Sunday in Fallujah in an apparent missile strike. A 16th soldier died Thursday of injuries suffered in the attack, the Pentagon said.
The Defense Department said the soldier, Sgt. Paul F. Fisher, 39, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, died at a hospital in Germany.
If confirmed as a hostile attack, Friday's crash in Tikrit would be the third U.S. helicopter downed in two weeks. On October 25, rocket-propelled grenades took down a Black Hawk near Tikrit, wounding one soldier.
In further violence Friday, assailants ambushed a U.S. military convoy in the northern city of Mosul, killing one soldier and wounding six, according to the Coalition Press Information Center and the 101st Airborne Division.
Rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire hit the 101st convoy at about 7 a.m. (11 p.m. EST Thursday), a spokesman said.
The ambush was the second fatal attack on U.S. forces in the area in less than a day. Coalition officials said Friday that an explosive device hit a U.S. military convoy Thursday near Mosul, killing one soldier and wounding two.
The soldier who died also was attached to the 101st Airborne.
An homemade bomb exploded shortly before 11 a.m. (3 a.m. EST) as the convoy traveled on a highway east of Mosul, a coalition statement said.
Also Friday, a U.S. soldier sustained injuries when assailants launched two rocket-propelled grenades at a military convoy in Baghdad, slightly damaging the two U.S. Humvees, eyewitnesses told CNN's Matthew Chance.
34 U.S. troops dead in November
Since the war began, 394 U.S. troops have died. Of those, 255 have died after President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. Thirty-four American troops and one Polish soldier have been killed in the first week of November.
There is no reliable source for Iraqi civilian or combatant casualty figures, either during the period of major combat or after May 1. The Associated Press reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20, but the AP said that the figure was based on records of only half of Iraq's hospitals and the actual number was thought to be significantly higher.
In Husaybah, coalition forces Thursday completed the first phase of "All American Tiger," an operation targeting anti-coalition militants. U.S. soldiers detained three members of an anti-coalition cell and arrested Iraqis suspected of attacks against coalition forces.
In the village of Maydan, U.S. troops raided houses, detaining a few dozen people, including a suspected arms dealer known as Yunis, described as a "high value target" -- military jargon for someone the Americans wish to question. Some of those detained were released.
Soldiers also found a weapons cache, including AK-47 rounds; .50 inch caliber rounds for a heavy machine gun; a crate of blasting caps -- often used as detonators for roadside bombs; detonator cords; a few AK-47 rifles; and a small quantity of C4 explosives described as "improvised explosive device ordnance."
Turkish troops in Iraq not a sure thing
Turkey won't send troops to neighboring Iraq to help U.S. forces -- at least not in the near future, a source with the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Friday.
This comes after the Foreign Ministry announced Friday that it will review parliament's decision last month to authorize the deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq.
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul discussed the issue by phone Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
There has been strong opposition in Iraq to a troop deployment by some neighboring countries as well as ongoing conflicts between Turkey and the Kurds, who live in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq.
Turkey particularly is concerned over any Kurdish secessionist aspirations. (Full story)
CNN's Dana Bash, Jamie McIntyre, Nic Robertson and Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
