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UPDATE: I knew it! 1920 Revolution Brigade claims downing of British Plane on Video. This is the same group responsible for the kidnapping of American Dean Sadek. (ht: Michelle Malkin)

10 are believed dead in the crash. Via Jeff Quinton this Times article:

The Ansar al-Islam group said in a statement on an Islamic website that its fighters tracked the Hercules aircraft, "which was flying at a low altitude, and fired an anti-tank missile at it".

The statement said: "Thanks be to God, the plane was downed and a huge fire and black clouds of smoke were seen rising from the location of the crash."

Established after the 9/11 attacks, Ansar al-Islam is one of IraqÂ’s older extremist groups and has been linked to al-Qaida.

First, Ansar al Islam has not been active in over a year. Unless the report is wrong and they mean Ansar al Sunna, which happens from time to time. The fighting remnants of Ansar al Islam seemed to have joined Ansar al Sunna. The only Ansar al Islam related activities in the past year have been fundraising and planning by a cell in Germany.

Second, wrong area. Ansar al Islam's base of operation was in Kurdistan. Ansar al Sunna has been operating in areas that were formerly Kurdish but which were 'Arabized' under the Saddam Hussein regime. The plane was apparantly shot down only 20 miles north-west of Baghdad which is in the Sunni triange but nowhere near al Sunna's normal base of operations.

Unless of course the terrorists were referring to this....

Posted by: Rusty at 08:44 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 312 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Two readings on this: 1. The Lockheed C-130 can be equiped with CM technology (Chafe, Flares), and most of the times is for heat, and radar guided ground-to-air munitions. The lack of any countermeasures "signatures" on the video recording could be: A. The weapon was not a autonomous ground-to-air weapon, but an non-autonomous weapon used in an un-orthodox fashion (anti-personal, or anti-tank wepaon). B. Lack of countermeasures onboard C. Crew / CM system failure to acknowledge launch of an autonomous munitions. 2. Footage shot of mutitions being expended, then footage of crashed aircraft being added on to get required PR. If a munition of that size would hit a C-130 in mid-flight there would be smoke and fire in the air as well as noticable debres falling ... even if it was a 1-1,000,000 chance hit on a fuel cell.

Posted by: Salamander at January 31, 2005 12:04 PM (V40IZ)

2 As a former C-130 pilot, I would say the options A + C above would be the root causes as to why the plane was shot down. If it was an optically guided anti-tank missile, then reactive flares would be ineffective. But such an anti-tank missile would have a short range only useful against low-flying aircraft, which unfortunately the Brits were this day. If the crew didn't see the launch, then any reactive maneuvering wouldn't have been performed, thus the absence of any flares. The damage an anti-tank missile would do to the C-130 would be devastating, probably many times more than the standard MANPAD. Remember, an anti-tank missile is normally used against heavily armored vehicles, which the C-130 is not. Hitting a fuel cell isn't the only way to take the Herc out, a lucky strike at the wing root could structurally weaken the airframe and take off the wing or a lucky shot into the cockpit, and that is all she wrote. Either way, these terrorist bastards got lucky.

Posted by: Craig D. at January 31, 2005 09:47 PM (f3XV4)

3 12,657 Ansar Al-Islam militants killed so far, and only 1,598 American Forces killed - haha!!! AMERICAN FORCES KILLS THE PRIMITIVES SUNNI's LIKE SMOOSHING LITTLE ANTS !!

Posted by: Brian Moreno at May 30, 2005 06:37 AM (RATdR)

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