Thu, Apr 10, 2003
Two
American airmen have been missing since their F-15E Strike Eagle
went down in Iraq April 6, U.S. military officials in Saudi Arabia
said.
Defense officials in the Pentagon had no further information on
whether the airplane was shot down or crashed for other reasons.
The two airmen and their aircraft were forward-deployed from the
4th Fighter Wing, at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.,
according to a news release from the Combined Forces Air Component
Command at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.
The release warned of "swift and severe consequences" for any
Iraqi citizen or military service member who fails to honor the
rules of the Geneva Conventions in dealing with prisoners of war.
In a separate operation, a coalition search-and-rescue team risked
"severe weather conditions" April 7 to rescue two critically
wounded soldiers.
As described in a CFACC news release, the Special Operations
Command's Rescue Coordination Center contacted the Joint Search and
Rescue Center at an undisclosed desert airbase to coordinate the
evacuation of the two special operations troops from a site five
miles south of Baghdad.
Two HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters traveled from a
coalition airbase in southern Iraq, while four A-10 Thunderbolt IIs
provided cover. When the aircrews of the Pave Hawks learned the
soldiers were critically wounded, they arranged for MC- 130E Combat
Talon, with a flight surgeon and two medical technicians on board,
to meet them, the release explained.
Battling blowing sand that limited visibility to half a mile,
the Pave Hawks delivered the injured soldiers to the Combat
Talon at Najaf, roughly 75 miles south of Baghdad. From there the
patients were transferred to an advanced medical facility in
Kuwait. The names of the wounded soldiers have not been released,
pending notification of their families. "They were given a 95
percent chance of survival due to the joint efforts of the Air
Force, Army and special operations forces," the release stated.
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