Multi-National Division-Baghdad troops were engaged with small arms and machine gun fire by illegal militiamen while searching for a cache in a northwestern neighborhood of the Iraqi capital Aug. 23.
Paratroopers from Troop C, 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment attached to 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, confirmed killing 18 enemy combatants who were engaging a U.S. patrol with small arms and machine gun fire in BaghdadÂ’s Hayy al Shulla neighborhood.
During the firefight, attack helicopters from the 4th “Guns” Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, observed eight to 12 men armed militiamen with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades moving toward Coalition Forces. The pilots fired on the armed men and shortly thereafter observed several other Iraqi citizens policing up the site of the attack.
Charlie Troop continued with their mission to find the weapon cache after the small arms fire subsided. While searching the suspected area, they discovered several mortars rounds, two explosively-formed projectile roadside bombs, a rocket, other small arms weapons and command wire in an abandoned house. |