MARINE HELO DOWN; 31 DEAD

This is awful, just awful. Let’s hope these num­bers are off.
A U.S. Marine heli­copter trans­port­ing troops crashed Wednesday in the desert of west­ern Iraq, killing 31 peo­ple, American mil­i­tary offi­cials said. It was the dead­liest crash of a U.S. mil­i­tary heli­copter in Iraq.
A Pentagon source said the heli­copter was a CH-​​53 Sea Stallion, which is nor­mally con­fig­ured to carry 37 pas­sen­gers, but can take up to 55. There was no imme­di­ate word on how many peo­ple were on board or what caused the crash.
The mil­i­tary offi­cials did not spec­ify the nation­al­i­ties of those on board or say how many were sol­diers.
It was the biggest loss of life in a heli­copter crash in Iraq — and could be the dead­liest sin­gle inci­dent for American forces since the U.S.-led inva­sion in March 2003.
THERE’S MORE: Back in August, a Sea Stallion crashed in Okinawa; thank­fully, no one was killed. But that same month, two Marines died when their CH-​​53 copter went down over Iraq’s Al-​​Anbar province. In 2002, two more lost their lives when the newer, Super Stallion ver­sion of the air­craft broke down in Afghanistan.

January 26th, 2005 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.