Iraq

Copter crash kills 2; official slain

BAGHDAD - An OH-58 Kiowa helicopter crashed into the Euphrates River northwest of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing the two U.S. soldiers on board, and gunmen assassinated a senior Iraqi police official in the northern city of Mosul.

The helicopter, an armed reconnaissance craft that carries a two-man crew, went down at 1:50 p.m. near Haditha, which is 120 miles northwest of the capital. U.S. military officials said the cause had yet to be determined, but Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a military spokesman, said the crew of a second helicopter saw no hostile fire.

News agencies, quoting witnesses in Haditha, offered conflicting accounts. One reported seeing a missile strike the helicopter. Another said the Kiowa, which typically flies low to avoid enemy fire, struck a power line before crashing into the river.

Since the occupation began in April, the U.S. military has lost more than a dozen helicopters, most to ground fire in a region north and west of Baghdad known as the Sunni triangle. The deadliest was Nov. 15 when two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters collided over Mosul, killing 17 soldiers. At least four other Kiowas have crashed.

In Mosul, a city at the edge of the triangle, gunmen assassinated Hikmat Mahmoud Mohammed, the city's deputy police chief. He was killed on his way to work Wednesday, police said, the latest in a campaign of assassinations in Iraq's third-largest city targeting officials, police, translators and others working with the occupation.

February has marked the bloodiest month in Iraq since the occupation began, with scores of Iraqis killed in a devastating series of suicide bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere. U.S. officials have said they believe violence will mount as the country nears the formal end of direct U.S. rule of the country. Under a U.S. plan for transferring power, Iraqis are scheduled to assume sovereignty June 30.

LONDON - In a sudden reversal, Britain said Wednesday that it would not prosecute a 29-year-old government linguist who admitted leaking a top-secret American request for assistance in bugging U.N. diplomats.

The request was made by the U.S. National Security Agency during the debate over the Iraq war a year ago, according to the linguist, Katharine Gun, and her lawyers.

Gun worked for Britain's General Communications Headquarters, the intelligence agency that intercepts and deciphers communications around the world. The dropping of the case against her avoids a trial that her lawyers said they would have turned into a debate on the legality of Britain's entry into the war.

BAGHDAD - Two major ethnic groups - Kurds and Turkomen - pushed their causes as Iraqi officials struggle to draw up an interim constitution, a central pillar of U.S. plans for transferring power to the Iraqis.

A Kurdish group presented a petition it said had 1.7-million signatures supporting a referendum on independence for Kurdish areas in northern Iraq. About 4,000 people held a rally demanding protections under the constitution for the Turkomen, who have expressed fears about Kurdish domination.

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