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Copter crash might be RPG attack

An American Black Hawk helicopter crashed near former president Saddam Hussein's hometown in Iraq yesterday, killing all six people on board, and US soldiers said it had been probably shot down with a rocket-propelled grenade.

Apache attack helicopters were scouring the area around the crash site in Tikrit, 175km north of Baghdad, hunting for guerrillas who may have brought the Black Hawk down.

If confirmed to have been destroyed by hostile fire, it would be the third US helicopter brought down by guerrillas in two weeks.

"At approximately 9am this morning a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter went down," Major Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division told reporters. "At this stage we don't know if it was due to mechanical failure or another reason."

But soldiers in Tikrit said initial reports suggested the helicopter had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Last Sunday, guerrillas shot down a US Chinook helicopter west of Baghdad as it carried troops on a rest and recreation break, killing 16 American soldiers in the deadliest single strike on US-led forces since they invaded to oust Saddam.

On Oct. 25, guerrillas brought down a Black Hawk in Tikrit, hitting one of its engines with a rocket-propelled grenade. The helicopter made an emergency landing, and all five crew members escaped before it was engulfed in flames.

In the northern city of Mosul, an ambush on a convoy killed one soldier and wounded six others yesterday, Sergeant Kelly Tyler of the 101st Airborne Division told reporters. In a separate attack in the town, a bomb wounded three US soldiers.

The ambush brought to at least 140 the number of US soldiers killed in action since Washington declared major combat over on May 1 -- more than the 114 killed in March and April.

A Polish major was shot dead south of Baghdad on Thursday, the first soldier from a multinational division policing central Iraq to be killed in action.

Yesterday morning in Baghdad, guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a US tank and a civilian vehicle with American soldiers inside, wounding one soldier and an Iraqi boy, witnesses said.

The mounting US death toll in Iraq and the failure to find Saddam's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction have put pressure on US President George W. Bush, bidding for re-election next year.

Saddam offered to hold elections to avoid war with US
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