BAGHDAD — A U.S. security company helicopter crashed Tuesday as it flew over a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad where insurgents and Iraqi security troops fought a prolonged gunbattle.
A U.S. official said five American civilians on board were killed.
A senior Iraqi military official said the aircraft was shot down, but that was disputed by a U.S. military official in Washington. The Iraqi said the helicopter was hit by a machine gunner over the Fadhil neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, while the American official said there was no indication in initial reports that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot down.
A U.S. official in Baghdad had said there was no information to substantiate reports that the bodies had been shot.
All the officials demanded anonymity because the detailshad not been made public. The Americans said they did not know what caused the aircraft to crash.
Blackwater USA confirmed that five Americans employed by the North Carolina-based company as security professionals were killed. The statement from spokesman Anne Tyrrell did not provide identities or any details of the fighting.
The New York Times reported the helicopter went down as it came under attack and plummeted to the pavement through a tangle of electrical wires, but it was unclear if the crash resulted from gunfire, the wires or an effort to land.
Quoting unnamed American officials, the Times said the helicopter's four-man crew was killed along with a gunner on a second Blackwater helicopter. It said one military official said that at least four of the victims had suffered gunshot wounds in the head, raising the prospect that some of them had been shot on the ground.
Witnesses in the Fadhil neighborhood told The Associated Press that they saw the helicopter go down after gunmen on the ground opened fire, possibly striking the pilot, 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. The Green Zone houses the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government buildings.
A report in The Washington Post, quoting unnamed U.S. officials, said one of the Blackwater victims was killed as he traveled with the convoy on the ground.
Blackwater USA provides security for State Department officials in Iraq, trains military units from around the world and works for corporate clients.
Before Tuesday's crash, at least 22 employees of Blackwater Security Consulting or BlackwaterUSA had died in Iraq as a result of war-related violence, according to the Web site iCasualties. org, which tracks foreign troop fatalities in Iraq. Of those, 20 were Americans, and two were Polish.
Hours before President Bush's annual State of the Union address, the U.S. military announced three more troop deaths, a Marine killed Sunday and two soldiers killed Monday. That raised the three-day toll since Saturday to 31.
Iraqi police and morgue officials, meanwhile, reported at least 57 people were killed in sectarian violence nationwide Tuesday, including 27 bodies, most showing signs of torture, that were dumped in Baghdad.
The U.S. military also reported it had detained four suspects in the Jan. 20 sneak attack on U.S. forces during a security meeting with their Iraqi counterparts in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.
Information for this article was contributed from Washington by Lolita C. Baldor and from Raleigh, N.C., by Estes Thompson of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 01/24/2007