Insurgents fire at medical helicopter

Insurgents fire at medical helicopter
Published: May 14, 2011 at 6:39 PM

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 14 (UPI) -- Insurgents in Afghanistan opened fire on a medical evacuation helicopter marked with the universally recognized Red Cross symbol, military officials said.

The helicopter had been called to Helmand province to evacuate a soldier injured by an improvised explosive device and when it attempted to land, insurgents opened fire, the International Security Assistance Force said in a news release Saturday.

"Attacking a medical evacuation helicopter is un-Islamic, inhumane and a further demonstration of insurgent hypocrisy," said U.S. Marine Corps Col. Scott Alley, ISAF Joint Command Combined Joint Operations Center director.

The soldier was injured when a combined Afghan and coalition patrol conducting clearing operations in the area struck the IED.



unhappycamper comment: Col. Alley needs to do a bit of reading:

http://www.olive-drab.com/od_medical_evac_helio_vietnam.php

~snip~

Statistics confirm that air ambulance pilots and crewmen were at risk of being injured, wounded, or killed during their one-year tour. About 1,400 Army commissioned and warrant officers served as air ambulance pilots in the war, one of the most dangerous types of aviation in Vietnam. About forty aviators (both commanders and pilots) were killed by hostile fire or crashes induced by hostile fire. Another 180 were wounded or injured as a result of hostile fire. Another forty-eight were killed and about two hundred injured as a result of non-hostile crashes, many at night and in bad weather while on evacuation missions.

These totals mean that slightly more than one-third of the aviators became casualties in their work, and the crew chiefs and medical corpsmen who accompanied them suffered similarly. Furthermore, helicopter ambulance missions in the Vietnam War were lost to hostile fire at a rate 3.3 times higher than other aviation missions. Even compared to the loss rate for non-medical helicopters on combat missions, the ambulance loss was 1.5 times higher. Warrant officer aviators, who occasionally arrived in South Vietnam without medical training or an assignment to a unit, were sometimes warned that air ambulance work was a good way to get killed.

un-Islamic???
:wtf:

I wonder if that's in the Koran?