Militants claim shooting down US Chopper in Iraq
Foreign Desk Report

BAGHDAD (Iraq)—Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed Thursday to have shot down a U.S. attack helicopter that crashed near Ramadi, killing two Marines aboard, and residents buried dead from what they said was a subsequent U.S. airstrike nearby.
Boys stood Thursday beside the wreckage of an AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter that crashed a day earlier near the insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.
“Brethren in al-Qaida in Iraq’s military wing downed a Super Cobra attack helicopter in Ramadi with a Strella rocket, thanks be to God,” the group said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web forum often used for its claims.
The authenticity of the statement, which bore the nickname of the group’s spokesman, Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, could not be confirmed.
The military did not specify the cause of the crash, but Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said Thursday that witnesses “believe they saw a munition fired at the helicopter and saw the helicopter break in pieces in midair and then crash.”
Hours later, a U.S. fighter jet dropped two 500-pound bombs on what the military said was an “insurgent command center” about 400 yards from where the helicopter went down.
Associated Press Television News video from the scene Thursday showed residents digging through the rubble of several homes and burying a half-dozen bodies in graves. The bodies were covered with blankets, making it impossible to identify them.
The two dead Marines were among seven U.S. troops killed Tuesday and Wednesday. One of them died in the town of Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, when his patrol came under small arms fire.
At least 2,036 U.S. military service members have died since the war began in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In a separate statement, Al-Qaida in Iraq also said it sentenced to death two Moroccan Embassy employees kidnapped last month in Iraq.
Two Iraqi policemen were killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad on Thursday, and bodies of 12 men who had been kidnapped and killed were found in a sewage station, police said.
But few attacks by Sunni-led insurgents were reported in Iraq on Thursday as Sunni Arabs began the three-day religious holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which ends a month of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Most Iraqi Shiites start the holiday Friday.
In Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, children appeared on the streets in new clothes, and the amusement park was crowded with families for the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
But long-standing animosity to U.S. forces also was apparent in the mostly Sunni city, 80 miles north of Baghdad.
“The real Eid for Iraqis will be the day that occupation forces get out of our country,” said Aqel Omar, 48, a retired government employee, as he gathered with about 30 relatives.
“I hope that next year our country is liberated and stable and that we can rebuild it again.”
On Wednesday, a suicide bomber detonated a minibus in an outdoor market packed with shoppers ahead of Eid, killing about 20 people and wounding more than 60 in Musayyib, a Shiite Muslim town on Euphrates River, about 40 miles south of Baghdad. On July 16, nearly 100 people died in Musayyib in a suicide bombing near the same site.
But little violence was reported across Iraq by late afternoon Thursday.