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Accident kills 3 marines { April 24 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wodead243251535apr24,0,3036567.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlineshttp://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wodead243251535apr24,0,3036567.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
3 Marines Killed, 7 Hurt in Accident
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 24, 2003
Three Marines were killed and seven injured in an accident in Iraq Tuesday while they were handling a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, U.S. Central Command said.
The Marines with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were firing the RPG - one of the more common weapons used by paramilitary, Fedayeen and other groups that have threatened U.S. and British forces - to familiarize themselves with it.
The launcher malfunctioned, said officials with U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar. The accident occurred Tuesday evening in a remote area near the southern Iraqi city of Kut, officials said.
The names of the Marines were being withheld until their next of kin could be notified. The accident was under investigation.
Before these deaths, 128 U.S. troops had been killed in the war, the Pentagon said.
Yesterday, the second of two Air Force officers killed when their F-15E went down in Iraq was identified yesterday as a 37-year-old Virginia man.
Maj. William R. Watkins III was the weapons system officer on the plane when it went down April 7 during a combat mission near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, the military said.
The Pentagon has not said whether the plane was shot down or was lost under other circumstances. The pilot of the F-15E was Capt. Eric B. Das, of Amarillo, Texas. His remains were identified last week.
Watkins leaves a wife of five years, Maj. Melissa Watkins, an intelligence officer stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, and their 11-month-old son, William. Melissa Watkins is expecting the couple's second child in August.
Only one U.S. service member remains listed as missing from the war - Army Sgt. Edward J. Anguiano, 24, of Brownsville, Texas, who disappeared after his convoy was ambushed March 23 in Iraq.
For British forces, friends were deadlier than foes in the Iraq war, with "friendly fire" and other accidents accounting for 22 of the 32 British deaths.
Britain's first eight deaths came in the crash of a U.S. helicopter in Kuwait on March 21. Six British servicemen were killed a day later, when two Royal Navy helicopters collided over the Persian Gulf. On March 23, two British fliers died when their plane was shot down by a U.S. Patriot missile battery.
Of the 32 British soldiers who were killed, five died in "friendly fire" with U.S. forces, 17 in accidents involving the British military, nine in action, and one of natural causes.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
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