Recovery efforts were under way Wednesday evening to find two American servicemembers who went missing after a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter assigned to a Marine Corps air wing crashed Tuesday in western Iraq, a coalition spokesman said.
The spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said Wednesday in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes that he did not expect further information on the matter to be released until Thursday morning.
Four other servicemembers had been rescued from the crash and were in stable condition, according to U.S. military officials at the Baghdad command.
The crash of the UH-60 helicopter did not appear to be the result of enemy fire, officials said. The helicopter was assigned to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in Anbar province.
“The aircraft has been located,” a statement issued from the Marine headquarters at Camp Fallujah read.
The helicopter was on a reconnaissance flight at the time of the incident, officials said.
“We are using all the resources available to find our missing comrades,” Marine spokesman Maj. Riccoh Player said.
At a news briefing for reporters in Baghdad’s Green Zone earlier in the day Wednesday, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said an investigation was under way into the incident.
The helicopter apparently crashed due to “some kind of malfunction,” Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV said.
Caldwell said the helicopter came to rest upside down in water.
“Dive teams have gone in there today,” Caldwell said.
“I have not received the most current report, although I know we’ll have full status on all our personnel who were associated with that helicopter shortly and then appropriate notifications will be made to the families.”
