KurdistanObserver.com
Sweden Suspends Flights to Southern Kurdistan After Rocket
Attack
August 14, 2007
AP
Sweden has suspended all commercial flights to and from Iraq,
the aviation authority said Tuesday, contending one of the country's passenger
jets was targeted by an apparent rocket attack last week as it took off from the
Southern Kurdistani city of Sulaimani.
An Iraqi airport official denied the plane had come under fire. He blamed the
incident instead on Kurds who were hunting using spotlights that the pilots
mistook for the arc of an incoming missile.
Last Wednesday, pilots of the Nordic Airways plane carrying 130 passengers
noticed a trail of light arcing over the aircraft just after takeoff, Civil
Aviation Authority spokesman Anders Lundblad said. The McDonnell Douglas MD83
was not hit and arrived safely in Stockholm.
Lundblad said the incident was being investigated, but preliminary information
suggested "some kind of rocket" was fired at the plane.
The authority suspended all commercial airline traffic between Sweden and Iraq
last week pending a review of the security situation in Southern Kurdistan.
While many helicopters have been shot down by militants in Iraq, only one
commercial airplane is known to have been hit. In November 2003, a plane
operated by the global delivery service DHL was struck by a shoulder-fired
missile near Baghdad and forced to make an emergency landing with its wing in
flames. The three crew members were unhurt.
It is rare for such violence to occur in Sulaimani, a city in Iraq's relatively
peaceful autonomous Kurdish region, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northeast of
Baghdad.
Kamiran Ahmed, the director of the Sulaimani airport, denied the plane had come
under fire.
"The Swedish pilot informed us that he saw gunfire against his airplane the
evening of Aug. 8," he said. "We took the necessary procedures and coordinated
with the Kurdish security agency to check ... but they couldn't confirm that."
"The pilot's assumptions were wrong," he said. "In fact, the Kurdish hunters are
using spotlights at night."
Birds and rabbits are most often hunted in the area.
"We interviewed more than 50 passengers who arrived in Sweden and had been on
board and they said nothing happened and they hadn't seen any gunfire," Ahmed
said
While there are no Kurdish officials in Stockholm, Ahmed said officials in
southern Kurdistan had asked ordinary Kurds living in Sweden to interview the
passengers.
The Swedish decision affected two small airlines: Nordic Airways, which flies
once a week between Stockholm and Sulaimani, and Viking Airlines, which operates
four flights a week between Stockholm and Arbil, also in southern Kurdistan.
Nordic Airways rebooked passengers leaving Iraq on other airlines, while about
3,000 people booked on Viking Airlines flights were stranded in Iraq, the
aviation authority said.
Sweden is home to more than 70,000 Iraqi immigrants, many of whom come from the
Kurdish areas in Southern Kurdistan.
Mikael Wangdahl, Chief Executive of Nordic Airways, said the Aug. 8 incident was
immediately reported to air traffic controllers and the U.S. military. The
pilots were then advised to continue the flight, but to take a shorter route.
Passengers and cabin crew did not notice what happened, Wangdahl said, but crew
members were briefed about it after the plane landed in Stockholm.
The Sulaimani airport, a former Iraqi military landing strip used in the
Iran-Iraq war and later deserted, was reopened by Kurds cooperating with U.S.
forces in early 2003, weeks before the start of the war.
