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CJTF-7 Public AffairsBAGHDAD, IraqRelease #040112d 1st AD soldiers, Iraqi firefighters rededicate fireboat BAGHDAD, Iraq – For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Baghdad has a fire boat patrolling the Tigris River—officially. The Future 2, a fire boat found looted and inoperable by soldiers of the 40th Engineer Battalion, 1st Armored Division, on the bank of the Tigris near the 14th of July Bridge, has been repaired and returned to duty. The boat was finally rededicated by 1st Armored Division soldiers and Iraqi firefighters in a ribbon-cutting and christening ceremony on the Tigris near where it was...

Courtesy of U.S. Army Members of the team assist Sgt. Benjamin Park, a diver searching for a machine gun in the Tigris River. Rick Scavetta / S&S When a forklift fell in the Tigris River near Tikrit, Iraq, last week, divers from the 74th Engineer Detachment decided not to risk their lives in the fast moving current. Courtesy of U.S. Army Soldiers form the 74th Engineer Detachment dive team "Poseidon" begin searching a lake northeast of Baghdad for weapons of mass destruction. Drowned soldier not left behind TIKRIT, Iraq — A few weeks ago, soldiers from the 74th Engineer...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It was almost midnight on Dec. 10 when Staff Sgt. Aaron Reese stood up in his patrol boat, lost his balance and fell overboard. As Reese was swept away by the turgid Tigris River, his patrol mate, Spc. Todd Bates, plunged in to rescue him. Both men, from the Army's 135th Military Police Company based in the Cleveland suburb of Brookpark, drowned. Reese's corpse turned up the next morning. To find Bates, the U.S. military launched one of the largest search operations since Pfc. Jessica Lynch was captured during the war in April. Over the next two...

TIKRIT, Iraq - After raiding two farmhouses, the soldiers had found no sign of Saddam Hussein. Under a moonless sky on Saturday night, they began combing the palm groves and orange orchards, then moved on to the open, furrowed fields.   Once again, it was beginning to look as if Iraq´s most wanted man had eluded them. An informant, a confidant of Hussein whom they had brought along on the operation, had led them to that farm on the Tigris River. Now he pointed them to the very spot where Hussein was hiding in an underground chamber, according to soldiers...

Soldiers from the 652nd Assault Bridge Engineer Company, an Army Reserve unit based in Ellsworth, Wis., ferry troops to a site near Tikrit, Iraq where soldiers a constructing a 340-meter bridge across the Tigris River.  U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Liana Mayo Bridge Mission Pushes on Despite Challenges By U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Liana Mayo244th Combat Heavy Engineer Battalion   FORWARD OPERATING BASE IRONHORSE, Tikrit, Iraq — On a crisp November evening, as shadows stretched along the banks of the Tigris River, six soldiers from the 652nd Assault Float Bridge Engineer Company, climbed out of the multi-purpose boat...

Engineers Work to Keep Clean Water Flowing to Iraqis By Spc. Joshua Hutcheson, USASpecial to American Forces Press Service MOSUL, Iraq, Dec. 4, 2003 – American engineers in northern Iraq are using their skills to keep the water flowing into the people's houses in Mosul -- and to keep the oil out. In October a crude oil pipe ruptured, spilling an "unknown quantity" of oil into a dry creek bed 15 kilometers above the Tigris River. The Tigris is the source of water for millions of people in northern Iraq, said Maj. Scott Vick, group plans officer, 926th Engineer...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — This war-torn city has one oasis where no one fears car bombs or kidnappers, where the traffic moves freely and the air feels clean. The place is the River Tigris. On its languid waters boatmen ply their trade as they have for thousands of years, ferrying customers from bank to bank. A ride costs 100 Iraqi dinars — five cents. It is the cheapest, maybe the only, way to relax in Baghdad. No one gets rich on the river, the pilots say. But the work is steady, and not too hard. Many of the boatmen have run...

Sunday, October 26, 2003 Kodak moment at reopening of Baghdad bridge By Ron Jensen, Stars and StripesEuropean edition, Monday, October 27, 2003 Ron Jensen / S&S Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, speaks during a ceremony that opened the 14th of July Bridge in Baghdad on Saturday afternoon. Opening the bridge, which was damaged during the war, will help relieve traffic congestion in the Iraqi capital city. Ron Jensen / S&S Soldiers armed with digital cameras photograph the ribbon-cutting Saturday at the 14th of July Bridge in central Baghdad. BAGHDAD, Iraq — The commander of...

The Marsh Arabs of Iraq have given up waiting for outsiders to restore their wetlands. Local people are taking matters into their own hands by breaching dykes and shutting down pumping stations in a bid to restore the marshes drained by Saddam Hussein's regime. But some experts worry that their actions could hamper the region's recovery. Five months ago, New Scientist reported that an international team of wetland experts, backed by the US State Department, planned to gradually re-flood the wetlands (print edition, 26 April 2003). But reports from inside Iraq reveal this plan is increasingly irrelevant. Even as Saddam's...

Does anybody remember watching the video where the Iraqis were shooting into some reeds along the river with huge crowds looking on. Apparently they suspected that an airman or special forces guy (either U.S. or U.K.?) was trying to escape or something. I don't remember hearing anything more after that video footage and I've wondered ever since whether the guy either existed or escaped.

Coalition Denies Losing Pilot in Baghdad By HAMZA HENDAWI .c The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi officials launched a massive search for a possible downed coalition pilot in Baghdad on Sunday, shooting into the reeds and shallow water along the Tigris River. The U.S. military said the report was a fabrication. No coalition aircraft was shot down and no pilot was missing, said Navy Lt. Mark Kitchens, U.S. Central Command spokesman at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar . Hundreds of heavily armed police and security men opened up with Kalashikovs along the river after witnesses said they had seen...

I was just watching Fox News and they showed a bunch of Iraqi soldiers standing on the bank of a large river (Tigris??) running through downtown Baghdad shooting at the water! The officer in charge would point to different parts of the river and the soldiers would fire at it. Funny stuff.

Arab TV: U.S. pilot capturedFrom the International DeskPublished 3/23/2003 7:05 AMView printer-friendly version BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 23 (UPI) -- A Lebanese satellite channel, LBC TV reports from Baghdad that an American pilot was captured in Baghdad, Sunday. The station showed images of dozens of Iraqis rushing to a bridge overlooking the Tigris river to capture a pilot whose plane was shot down. The bridge is close to the neighborhood of Sanaka leading to the information ministry. LBC is saying a U.S. pilot was captured. The event took place at the time Baghdad was being bombarded and the bridge was crowded...

Sun Mar 23, 9:04 AM ET An Iraqi soldier fires his AK-47 rifle into reeds on the banks of the Tigris river in Baghdad, March 23, 2003 after reports that U.S. or British pilots may have ejected over the city. Television reports showed Iraqi soldiers shooting into the Tigris river and in boats, apparently searching the water for pilots. Smoke rose from a fire on the riverbank as hundreds of Baghdad residents looked on. 'Central Command denies any coalition aircraft were shot down over Baghdad,' the spokesman at Central Command forward headquarters outside Qatar told Reuters. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic Sun...

Iraqi soldiers search the reeds on the bank of the Tigris river, where it was believed that allied aircrew were hiding after having been shot down. Photo: AFP To be shot down behind enemy lines is every fighter pilot's nightmare. But in the crowd that watched from the banks of the Tigris River on Sunday as Iraqi soldiers searched for a British pilot who they believed had bailed out over Baghdad, some were willing him to safety. The rest of the world might have been focusing on the feisty Iraqi resistance to the United States advances into Iraq and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis have joined 82nd Airborne Division soldiers in guarding the country's key places. On Tuesday, Spc. Chad Gomez and Pfc. Luis Sanchez sat in a watchtower overlooking the Tigris River. With them providing security for the Al Dora power plant were Thair Fawzi Salim and Baha Mzid. Salim and Mzid are members of the Facility Protection Service, the Iraqi security force that assists the paratroopers in protecting banks, the power plant and an oil refinery. Having them join Americans is part of the effort to relinquish control to the Iraqi people. When the program started a few...

Baptism in the Tigris for U.S. Christian SoldiersSun August 24, 2003 07:28 AM ET By Andrew Cawthorne TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Nineteen-year-old Private Bill Goodwin puts down his gun, takes off his combat jacket and steps into the warm waters of Iraq's Tigris River. "I baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ," proclaims his unit's Protestant chaplain, Xuan Tran, submerging the soldier completely for Sunday's baptism rite. Goodwin emerges smiling and posing for a photo to send to his family in Oklahoma before reflecting on what he has done. "I have been away for five and a half months...

By HRVOJE HRANJSKIThe Associated PressSunday, August 24, 2003; 5:16 PM TIKRIT, Iraq - With war and death on his mind, Spc. Barry Page was baptized Sunday in the Tigris River by an Army chaplain at the sprawling U.S. military headquarters on the fabled river's banks. A Southern Baptist working as a military policeman, Page said he decided to "reannounce his life to Christ" in the birthplace of civilization. "I realized death is walking in this place," said the 22-year-old from Houston, his uniform and boots soaking wet. "It can be any of us. Next time it could be me." The...

<p>There could be an unexpected beneficiary of the war in Iraq: the environment.</p> <p>More specifically, the late, great Mesopotamian marshes -- a decade ago, the largest wetland by far in the Middle East, and a site considered by many religious scholars as the inspiration for the Garden of Eden in the Bible and Koran.</p>

<p>NUMANIYAH, Iraq - The streets of this river city came alive Thursday as residents began to adjust to the presence of hundreds of Marines who spent the day calming citizens' fears, meeting with ranking authorities, finding and destroying weapons caches and rooting out local remnants of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.</p>