SOUTH OF BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Seven U.S. troops freed Sunday after being held by Iraqi forces arrived by helicopter at a base south of Baghdad and were transferred to a C-130 transport plane headed for Kuwait, CNN's Bob Franken reported from the scene.
All seven were able to walk on their own, but two appeared to be more seriously injured and limped to the plane at the base, about 65 miles south of the Iraqi capital, Franken said. The other five ran to the plane, said Franken, who is embedded with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The seven were being flown to Kuwait City.
The parents of Chief Warrant Officer Ronald Young Jr., one of two Apache helicopter pilots shot down over Iraq, said they recognized their son in video shown on CNN. A Pentagon representative gave them the official confirmation about a half-hour later at their Lithia Springs, Georgia, home.
"I'm ecstatic," Ronald Young Sr. said.
"The main thing to me is knowing he's all right," Young said. "It's a relief. You just don't know how much it is. It's almost like Christmas, New Year's and everything all rolled into one."
They said they also recognized Chief Warrant Officer David Williams, who was in the helicopter with Young. They said Williams' wife told them she also saw him.
The families of Sgt. James Riley, Spc. Shoshana Johnson and Spc. Joseph Hudson of the 507th Maintenance Company also said they received official word Sunday that their relatives had been freed.
The troops were released to a Marine unit Sunday north of Baghdad after Iraqi officers abandoned their posts, Franken reported.
Sources said junior Iraqi guards took the captured U.S. troops to a light U.S. Marine armored unit north of Samarra, about 25 miles south of Tikrit -- Saddam Hussein's ancestral home and the last major Iraqi city that is not under coalition control. (Missing U.S. troops)
A large number of Cobra attack helicopters were engaging Iraqi forces inside Tikrit, and some 250 armored vehicles from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit had entered the north-central city as well, Matthew Fisher, a National Post of Canada reporter told CNN.
Brig. Gen. John Kelly told Fisher the Marines encountered five manned tanks earlier on the outskirts of the town and destroyed them and also engaged in a fierce firefight with an Iraqi infantry unit, killing at least 15. Fisher is embedded with Marines sent to Tikrit.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the Iraqi army has been destroyed and "there is no regime command and control." But he said that pockets of paramilitary and foreign fighters remain throughout the country. (Full story)
Earlier Sunday, CNN's Brent Sadler, one of the few Western journalists to travel to the immediate outskirts of Tikrit, said the town looked abandoned -- with no military movement and only a few civilians on the road. Highway signs bearing the deposed Iraqi leader's image were still intact.
The CNN convoy entered the city Sunday morning but had to flee under a hail of machine gun fire after passing through a checkpoint in Tikrit. (Full story)
At least one of the vehicles was hit, and a bodyguard returned fire. Sadler said one person in the seven-vehicle convoy received a head wound, apparently from flying glass when the back of a sport utility vehicle's window was blown out.
"That was a pretty ugly moment," Sadler said.
In Baghdad, U.S. troops are trying to restore order after intense fighting and subsequent looting.
Although the chaos that engulfed Baghdad after the collapse of Saddam's regime seemed to subside Saturday, a U.S. Marine was killed when two gunmen posing as landscape workers attacked a checkpoint at a medical facility, Central Command said.
Marines returned fire, killing one attacker, but the other escaped, Marine sources said.
The man who shot the Marine had a Syrian identification card, Central Command said. The Marine's name was withheld pending notification of relatives.
In Kirkuk, a former Iraqi air force colonel told U.S. military officials that he knew of 120 missiles within about an 18-mile (29-kilometer) radius of the city -- 24 of which carry chemical munitions, according to an Army intelligence posting at the airfield's military headquarters.
Tests on a captured warhead found at an airfield near Kirkuk were inconclusive. One set showed trace amounts of a nerve agent consistent with leakage from a chemically armed weapon, military sources said. Another set of tests showed nothing. More tests were expected.
Well it seems we found the first five POWs that were broadcast early on in the war as well as the two Apache Longbow crewmembers that got captured. This is very good to hear.
"If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."
"The captain claimed our people violated a 4,000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence. The subject did not survive interrogation."
wheee! Now to find Scott Speicher, or at least finally settle his case once and
for all
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Howedar wrote:Cool. I'm surprised the Iraqis didn't kill them.
Why? If they were held by the real hardcore nuts then perhaps, but ordinary Iraqi soldiers?
One former US POW (USAF IIRC) was on FOX saying he had no problem with the way the ordinary Iraqi Army treated him in the last gulf war (unfortunatly he was moved from the Army to the intelligence services who did mis-treat POW's)
Anyway good to see them safe.
Master of the boffin, Formerly known as Evil S'tan
(\_/)
(O.o)
(> <) "That's no ordinary rabbit!...that's the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on"
No, I wouldn't expect ordinary soldiers to kill them. It definately would have been the hardcore nuts. That said, I'm surprised the hardcore nuts didn't kill them.
MKSheppard wrote:wheee! Now to find Scott Speicher, or at least finally settle his case once and
for all
He died in 1991. There's no evidence to assume he survived the AA-6 ACRID that blew his Hornets to bits.
The little bits I heard about this had the other pilots reporting that they saw his plane go up in a fireball.
Note: The airwing and squadron he flew for were stationed on the USS Saratoga (CV-60), the ship I was stationed on until December 13, 1990.
I don't recall ever having met him though. I did know one of the A-6 crewmen that was captured.
By the pricking of my thumb,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.
The other released prisoners were crewmen of an Apache helicopter downed the next day, Chief Warrant Officers Ronald D. Young and David S. Williams.
The two jumped in a canal and swam a quarter-mile to elude capture, but were caught by armed farmers who spotted them in the moonlight when they tried to run for cover in a stand of trees, recalled Williams, 30, of Orlando, Fla.
Bugger. Looks like the farmers weren't too happy to see em there. Maybe that's what the farmer on Iraqi TV was being congratulated for.
