A Black Ha wk helicopter crash in the Kuwaiti desert killed four American soldiers early Tueday morning. US military officials in Kuwait said the UH-60 helicopter crashed during a nighttime training mission near Camp New Jersey, about 31 miles northwest of Kuwait City. The aircraft was deployed to Kuwait from the Germany-based V Corps. It was conducting training with another helicopter from V Corps, which was not involved in the crash. The four crewmembers who died were the only personnel aboard at the time of the crash, officials said.

DOD IDs KIA

DoD has disclosed  the identities of four Army soldiers killed in the Tuesday crash of a UH-60 in Kuwait. Killed were:

Spc. Rodrigo Gonzalez-Garza, 26, of Texas
Chief Warrant Officer Timothy W. Moehling, 35, of Fla.
Chief Warrant Officer John D. Smith, 32, of Nev.
Spc. William J. Tracy, 27, of N.H.

Gonzalez-Garza and Moehling were assigned to Company A, 5-158th Aviation, Giebelstadt Army Air Field, Germany. Smith and Tracy were assigned to Company B, 5-158th Aviation, Aviano Air Base, Italy.

In late January, another Black Hawk crash killed all four crewmembers aboard near Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. Elsewhere in the region, coalition aircraft from Operation Northern Watch struck three surface-to-air missile systems in northern Iraq after they were moved into the Northern No-fly Zone.

Coalition aircrews used precision-guided weapons to strike the missile systems between 5 and 6:30 p.m. Eastern time Feb. 24, U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, reported. EUCOM has operational control over the ONW mission.

The last such Northern Watch strike was on Jan. 31, when coalition aircraft, in self-defense, dropped precision-guided weapons on Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery 10 miles east of Mosul, according to a EUCOM news release. [ANN Thanks the American Forces Press Service for their help with this story].

FMI: www.defenselink.mil