Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Soldiers not found in Army helicopter wreckage BY AMY GEIER EDGAR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FLORENCE - An Army heli copter that vanished during a training flight in bad weather was found Tuesday night on a river bank, and divers began searching for three soldiers who were aboard, Army officials said. The UH-60 Blackhawk was found at 7:55 p.m. near a bridge off Interstate 95 in Dillon, said Maj. Rich Patterson, a Fort Bragg spokesman at the command post here. The helicopter was reported missing about 9:50 p.m. Monday during a flight from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Florence. The discovery of the wreckage along the Great Pee Dee River changed the search "from a search and rescue operation to a search and recovery operation,” Patterson said. "There are no vis ible signs of survivors reported at the scene.” The state Highway Patrol closed off the northbound lane of the interstate while divers searched for bodies. The names of the soldiers are being withheld pending notifica tion of the family. The helicopter was spotted by a truck driver on his way home along 1-95 who heard about the missing aircraft through media re ports and joined the search. On his third pass through the area, the driver noticed tree damage and what looked like a wheel near the river bank and called authorities, said Dusty Owens, director of the Florence County Emergency Management. "We certainly appreciate his ef forts as well as everyone else,” Owens said. Heavy foliage in the swampy area just north of Florence and near the North Carolina state line made it difficult to see the heli copter, Owens said. Rain and thunderstorms moved across South Carolina on Monday evening, but Army offi cials said the weather should not have been a factor in the heli copter’s disappearance. The Army is investigating the cause of the accident. A second helicopter on the night vision goggles training mis sion landed in an airfield in Dillon when it lost contact with the miss ing Blackhawk, Patterson said. Patterson didn’t know if weath er was a factor in that decision. "I am not going to speculate on their reasons,” he said. That helicopter has returned to Fort Bragg and its crew inter viewed, but Patterson would not say what came out of those inter views. The search operation covered more than 120 square miles in five counties Tuesday and included the Civil Air Patrol, helicopter crews and soldiers on the ground from Fort Bragg, Florence County offi cials, emergency medical and fire services, state Natural Resources Department officers. Tuesday afternoon, Fort Bragg sent down a second set of four he licopters —Apaches with night vi sion and forward-looking infrared radar systems that can spot a hu man being by detecting differ ences in temperature. Those chop pers were to relieve the first set of four that had arrived at daybreak and to take the search into the night. The ground search had been called off at dark and was to re sume Wednesday at dawn. Owens said boats searched the surface of the water and banks. At its deepest point, the river is 30 feet deep, he said. On the ground, sheriffs deputies took teams out on about 1,200 acres of land owned by two hunting clubs. The searchers, who were most ly members of volunteer fire de partments, drove all-terrain vehi cles down dirt roads and through the woods. They tied pieces of yel low police tape on tree branches after they had searched one of the many dirt paths that crisscross the property. Wayne Bellflowers, a deputy with the Florence County Sheriff’s Office, was on a ground search Tuesday afternoon. He had start ed about 1 a.m. looking for the Blackhawk and was still going at 3 p.m. "You’ve got to have faith,” he said. "Never leave a man out there. You just have to go until you find something.” Syrian forces clash with gunmen after attack on former UN office BY ALBERT AJI THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DAMASCUS, SYRIA — Gunmen attacked a former United Nations office in a diplomatic quarter of Damascus, setting off a battle with police that pelted nearby buildings with bullets and grenades. The fighting killed two attack ers, a policeman and a civilian, the government said. Syria has not seen such vio lence since the 1980s, when the government put down an insur gency by Islamic militants. The vacant building was for merly occupied by the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, which oversees an agreement be tween Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights. It was exten sively damaged by fire during the gunbattle. “Unidentified terrorists at tacked a U.N. office building in Damascus and this office is sur rounded by many embassies as well,” Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, said in a telephone interview from Washington. Moustapha said it was too early to know the motivation of the at tackers or whether they were Islamist. “There was a random exchange of fire and probably every build ing in that area was hit by a grenade or a bullet” before securi ty forces surrounded the area and returned fire, he said. Syria’s official news agency SANA, quoting a security source, called the attackers “a terrorist band.” The Al-Arabiya television net work said there were four attack ers. It said three were killed and one wounded. The report could not be immediately confirmed. After the gunbattle, large crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of the damaged building. Youths drove by honking car horns, waving pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and chanting pro-Syrian and pro Assad slogans. In New York, Marie Okabe, a U.N. spokeswoman, said all U.N. staff and facilities were safe and accounted for. The U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the capital of neighbor ing Iraq, was bombed twice after the U.S.-led war last year. The first, on Aug. 19, killed 22 people including top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Witnesses, who said the vio lence started about 7:20 p.m. ahd lasted 70 minutes, gave different reports that could not immediate ly be reconciled. One witness said four gunmen came out of a white van on the main Mazza Boulevard in front of the Canadian Embassy and started shooting indiscriminately. A po lice car on patrol in the area rushed to the scene and came un der fire. The police shot back and police and plainclothes security forces reinforcements arrived, the witness said. Three gunmen were killed and a fourth was taken into custody, the witness reported. Five cars were gutted and there was a fire at the building where the United Nations used to have offices. Police explosives experts were brought to the scene to examine the bodies of the dead gunmen to make sure they were not booby-trapped. www.daiiygamecock.com What are you going to do with all that STUFF?? 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