Copter downed in Iraq; 11 killed

BAGHDAD -- Insurgents with a heat-seeking missile shot down a helicopter north of the Iraqi capital yesterday, killing all six American security contractors and five others on board, according to US officials and insurgents.

An Internet statement by a group identifying itself as the Islamic Army said it had captured and killed the lone crew member who survived the crash. The statement was accompanied by a video showing the shooting of a man who was found in tall grass.

The attack marked the first time in the two years of the US-led occupation that fighters in Iraq have succeeded in bringing down an aircraft contracted for transporting civilians. Planes and helicopters are being used increasingly around the country as attacks make road travel on vital routes deadly for Iraqis and foreigners alike. The chartered helicopter was a military craft designed and built in the former Soviet Union. The helicopter went down east of Baghdad over countryside along the Tigris River farmed by prosperous Sunnis intensely loyal to the former government of Saddam Hussein.

The six Americans on board were employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm based in North Carolina, US officials said. Their identities were not immediately released.

The Blackwater contractors and two Fijian bodyguards working for Skylink Air and Logistic Support based in Virginia were en route from a Baghdad-area airfield to Tikrit, north of the capital, US officials said.

The three-man Bulgarian crew was flying the helicopter close to the ground in a military tactic intended to avoid giving attackers time to spot aircraft on high and line up a shot, according to US officials.

In Ramadi, a western base for insurgents, a printed message posted yesterday afternoon on the gates of a mosque that has served as a bulletin board for alleged insurgent statements asserted that an attacker with a shoulder-fired missile launcher had waited three days on a hilltop for his successful shot at a foreign aircraft. The statement described the weapon as a Soviet-designed Strella heat-seeking antiaircraft missile, the insurgent statement claimed. In Sofia, the Bulgarian Defense Ministry also said a missile shot down the aircraft.

A US Embassy official in Baghdad said it presumed that hostile fire took down the craft, but said confirmation would come only after investigation.

The video attributed to the Islamic Army said it had killed the survivor ''in revenge for the Muslims who have been killed in cold blood in the mosques of tireless Fallujah before the eyes of the world and on television screens, without anyone condemning them." It was apparently referring to the shooting by an American soldier of a wounded Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque on Nov. 13 during a US offensive.

In the video, militants come across the injured man in the flight suit. ''Stand up! Stand up!" an insurgent orders the man, who reaches out and says ''Give me a hand." Then, apparently referring to a fractured leg, he says ''It's broken."

The militants -- unseen except in brief glances -- tell him to stand up. ''Weapons? Weapons?" the gunmen ask him in Arabic as he stands uneasily.

They tell him, ''Go!", and he starts to hobble away with his back to the camera. Then there are voices and he turns to the side, holding up a hand. Then the shooting begins, bullets hitting his body as he falls backward into the grass. The insurgents can be heard shouting ''Allahu akbar," or ''God is great," as he goes down. More bursts of gunfire then hit the body.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.