Fox

BAGHDAD — Four of the five Americans killed when a U.S. security company’s helicopter crashed in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad were shot execution-style in the back the head, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Wednesday.

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In Washington, a U.S. defense official said the four had been shot in the back of the head but it was unclear whether they were alive or already dead or dying when they were shot.

It also was not clear whether the small aircraft was shot down in the common sense — that is, whether gunfire actually brought it down or caused the craft to drop toward the ground, where it got caught in electrical wires, he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

[snip]

Blackwater USA confirmed that five Americans employed by the North Carolina-based company as security professionals were killed. The statement from spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell did not provide identities or any details of the fighting.

Another American official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said three Blackwater helicopters were involved. One had landed for an unknown reason and one of the Blackwater employees was shot at that point, he said. That helicopter apparently was able to take off but a second one then crashed in the same area, he added without explaining the involvement of the third helicopter.

That account would help explain why only four of the men were reportedly shot execution-style.

The New York Times, citing unnamed American officials, reported that the helicopter’s four-man crew was killed along with a gunner on a second Blackwater helicopter.

The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television said the 1920 Revolution Brigades insurgent group claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter and showed a video taken by a cell phone of a mass of still-smoldering twisted metal that it was said was the wreckage of the chopper.

Another Sunni insurgent group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, also claimed responsibility for the same attack and posted identity cards of men who were on the helicopter on a Web site, including at least two that bore the name of Arthur Laguna, who was later identified by his mother as among those killed.

Laguna was a 52-year-old pilot for Blackwater who previously served in the Army and the California National Guard, his mother, Lydia Laguna, of Rio Linda, Calif., told the AP in a telephone interview Tuesday night. She said she received a call from her other son, also a Blackwater pilot in Baghdad, notifying her of Arthur’s death.

[snip]

Witnesses in the Fadhil neighborhood told the AP that they saw the helicopter go down after gunmen on the ground opened fire, possibly striking the pilot or co-pilot or both. Accounts varied, but all were consistent that at least one person operating the aircraft had been shot and badly hurt before the crash.

The helicopter was believed to have been flying escort above a VIP convoy on the ground as it headed away from the heavily fortified Green Zone to an undisclosed destination.

This actually makes me physically ill.

The insurgents are getting more and more sophisticated weapons and there seems to be an unlimited supply of insurgents. They are coming in from every where to fight our Soldiers.

I sincerely hope that our country comes to it’s senses and starts fighting this war with real purpose.

Give our Soldiers the green light. Let them do what they have to do and support them in their actions. Enough is enough.