US captures suspects in copter downing

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi insurgents struck across the country yesterday with bomb attacks, killing at least 16 people, including an American soldier. US forces captured six men suspected in the downing of a civilian helicopter and the shooting death of the lone survivor.

The suspects in the helicopter downing were caught after US soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were tipped off by an Iraqi civilian who told the Americans that he knew where insurgents had stashed a blue Kia pickup truck that was used in the attack and led them to the site, the military said in a statement.

Soldiers searched two nearby houses shortly after midnight yesterday, arresting three men and seizing bomb-making material in the first home. Three suspects were grabbed from the second residence, and all were being questioned, the military said.

US forces did not identify the captives or say where they were taken into custody.

The Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter, flying from Baghdad to Tikrit, was shot down about 12 miles north of the capital on Thursday. The dead included six American bodyguards for US diplomats, three Bulgarian crew members, and two security guards from Fiji.

Two groups claimed responsibility for the attack and released videos to support their claims.

In one video, insurgents are seen capturing and shooting to death the lone survivor, identified as a Bulgarian pilot.

The aircraft was owned by Heli Air of Bulgaria and chartered by Toronto-based SkyLink Aviation Inc. The six Americans were employed by Blackwater Security Consulting, a subsidiary of security contractor Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C. Four of its employees were slain and mutilated by insurgents in Fallujah a year ago.

In other violence, Associated Press Television News cameraman Saleh Ibrahim was shot and killed when gunfire broke out after an explosion in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

AP photographer Mohammed Ibrahim, no relation to the cameraman, suffered shrapnel wounds in the same explosion. While at the hospital, Mohamed Ibrahim and his brother were escorted away by US forces. Their whereabouts could not immediately be determined. The US military said it was investigating the incident.

A series of explosions shook the Iraqi capital yesterday. The most deadly was a roadside bomb that exploded near an Iraqi army convoy on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20, police said.

Some of the surviving soldiers opened fire in response, shooting and killing the driver of a civilian car, police said.

The attack occurred near the Abu Ghraib prison, which was at the center of a prison abuse scandal last year after photographs were publicized showing US soldiers humiliating Iraqi inmates.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, a car bomb targeting a US patrol detonated on a busy road that links to the perilous highway leading to the airport. One Iraqi was killed and seven wounded, hospital officials said. Three US soldiers were also injured in the blast, which knocked down power lines and destroyed one military and two civilian vehicles, US forces said.

In al-Haswah, west of Baghdad, a US soldier assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force was killed when a roadside bomb exploded yesterday near the convoy in which he was traveling, the US military said.

At least 1,565 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an AP count.

Also yesterday:

An Iraqi civilian was killed by a bomb on a highway in Samarra, north of Baghdad, police said.

A roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army convoy in Mosul, wounding three soldiers, police and hospital officials said.

A bomb exploded near a Shi'ite mosque in Abu al-Khasib, a town near Basra in southern Iraq. Two charred bodies were pulled from a destroyed car and at least two Iraqis were injured, police said. A leading Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, condemned the attack in a statement late yesterday, calling it a ''hideous crime" and warned the militants they ''will not crack our unity and sow dissension between us by spitting out your venom."