to 18 American soldiers who were killed in the downing of a military helicopter and a roadside bombing Sunday, November 2.
It was seen as the deadliest day against American forces in Iraq since Bush declared an end of "major combat operations" May 1, adding to concern among Iraq’s minority Christians that more attacks are possible.
"I was in the first blast in the United Nations building (this summer) where I got injured and transferred to hospital. In a second blast I was five minutes away from (the) building," said Raffi Karakashian, a U.N. worker who edits a Christian newspaper.
"There is a possibility for a third threat," he said, as news emerged about the latest violence against Americans in the town of Fallujah in the Sunni Muslim heartland of former leader Saddam Hussein, about 60 kilometers (approx. 40 miles) west of Baghdad.
HELICOPTER CRASH-LANDED
At least 15 U.S. soldiers were killed and 21 others injured in when their army helicopter crash-landed after it was apparently hit by a missile, eyewitnesses and U.S. officials said.
"We’ve known about surface-to-air missiles since before we went in," U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Meet the Press program of the American television network NBC.
"They are dangerous and they exist in that country in large numbers, as they do in that part of the world. So it’s always a risk." Hundreds of the portable missiles, mainly Russian-made SAM-7s, are reportedly scattered around the country.
SHOULDER FIRED MISSILES
Coalition forces have been unable to locate a large number of shoulder- fired anti-aircraft missiles that were part of the arsenal of Hussein’s former regime. That is a primary reason why Baghdad International Airport has not been reopened to commercial traffic, the Voice of America (VOA) network eported.
VOA said that the portable missiles are easily smuggled, and that there are about 350,000 tons of missing weapons and ammunition in Iraq.
Soon after the helicopter was down, two U.S. civilians were later killed in a roadside bombing, with people dancing in the streets nearby, television footage showed.
PRIVATE CONTRACTORS KILLED
"We had two American private contractors killed and one slightly wounded in Fallujah when an improvised explosive device exploded as their truck drove by," Jack Holt, a spokesman for the US Army Corps of Engineers, told reporters.
Despite these set-backs, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld warned that the "remnants of the Baathist regime" of Saddam Hussein would fail in their efforts to take over Iraq.
"They want to take that country back and they are not going to. They are not going to come close to taking that country back," he told Fox News Sunday.
OPINION POLL
Meanwhile, a new public opinion poll by the Washington Post and the American network ABC shows a split in public opinion on Iraq, VOA reported.
The poll indicates that the war has become a major partisan issue, with the level of support for the president’s policies running much higher among members of his Republican party than among opposition Democrats.
But amid the ongoing violence in Iraq, churches are growing. Christians, who have often been identified with U.S. led forces, often risk their lives to visit churches between ongoing shootings and attacks, BosNewsLife learned earlier in Iraq.
