Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 9 January 2004 — Iraqi insurgents brought down a US Blackhawk helicopter yesterday near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, killing all nine US soldiers aboard. And a US Air Force C-5 cargo plane was apparently hit by a surface-to-air missile as it took off from Baghdad Airport, but managed to land safely.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a news conference the helicopter made an “emergency landing” near Fallujah, but wire services quoted eyewitnesses as saying they saw rockets hitting one of the two helicopters.

A witness told The Associated Press that he heard the whoosh of a rocket, saw it hit the aircraft in the tail and watched the chopper crash in a blaze.

Farmer Mohammed Ahmed Al-Jamali, 27, who lives close to the crash site, said he rushed to the scene but there was nothing he could do since all those on board were dead.

He said there were two helicopters in the air, both with the distinctive red crosses of medical evacuation craft, and that the second one was hit.

“I was in the farm, I heard the sound, looked up and I saw the rocket hit. It hit it in the tail,” Al-Jamali said.

Student Waleed Kurdi, 23, said he “heard a loud explosion and I saw the fire in the air.” He said the helicopter exploded in two before it hit the ground.

American troops arrived about an hour later, while a helicopter patrolled above, Al-Jamali said.

Kimmitt said there were nine military personnel on board and all were killed.

He said the reason for the emergency landing was not immediately clear, that troops had secured the site of the crash and that an investigation was under way. Soldiers kept journalists far from the site, about six kilometers (four miles) southwest of Fallujah, but they were able to see soldiers collecting the wreckage.

The helicopter was a medical evacuation aircraft but it was unclear if it was carrying patients, a military official said on condition of anonymity.

In Washington, a senior US defense official said an Air Force C-5 cargo plane, carrying 63 passengers and crew members, was apparently hit by a surface-to-air missile as it took off. “It looks like its number four engine was hit by a surface-to-air missile, but it was able to turn around, come back and land,” the official, who did not want to be identified, said.

News of the latest attacks came as US authorities released about 60 Iraqis from prison the day after a new amnesty program was announced.

The men were brought out of the Abu Ghraib jail near the capital, which once housed Saddam Hussein’s enemies, in two open trucks late in the afternoon and let out two km away. Honking their car horns and raising huge clouds of dust, hundreds of people who had been waiting outside the prison all day set off in pursuit. Later, they surrounded the freed men, searching desperately for friends and relatives.

Many of those released looked relieved but some were bitter.

“I’m very happy to be free,” shouted Kamal Risaeya, 32. He said he was not harmed in custody.

But another man, who refused to give his name, said he had been mistreated. His voice shaking with anger, he said: “I’m free, but now I will attack them.”

— Additional input from agencies