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Copter crash kills 5 troops

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 15, 2007

BAGHDAD - A U.S. transport helicopter crashed Tuesday near an air base west of Baghdad, killing five troops, the military said.

The CH-47 Chinook helicopter was conducting a routine post-maintenance test flight when it went down near Taqaddum air base, the U.S. military said.

Four other U.S. soldiers were reported killed in combat on Monday - three in an explosion near their vehicle in the northwestern Ninevah province and one in combat in western Baghdad.

The deaths raised to at least 3,700 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The violence punctuated a day when 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers began a sweep through the Diyala River valley in a new operation north of Baghdad in pursuit of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen driven out of Baqubah and Anbar province over the past several weeks.

Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a military spokesman in northern Iraq, said the force included 10,000 Americans and 6,000 Iraqis. He said U.S. aircraft used more than 30,000 pounds of munitions to block routes and destroy known and suspected heavy machine gun positions.

The Air Force also dropped 9,000 pounds of bombs to attack an al-Qaida in Iraq training camp, which included bunkers, living quarters, weapons and ammunition caches, Donnelly said.

Three suspected militants had been killed and four booby-trapped houses destroyed, he said, citing preliminary reports.

[Last modified August 15, 2007, 01:42:00]