5 U.S. troops, 4 Britons die in Iraq; U.S. chopper shot down

BAGHDAD – Four British soldiers were killed Thursday in an ambush in southern Iraq, while five U.S. troops died in separate attacks in Baghdad, and a U.S. Army helicopter went down south of the capital but all nine aboard survived, officials said.\nBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the possibility that elements linked to Iran might have been behind the ambush, which he called “a terrorist act,” but he added that it was too early to make a specific allegation against Tehran.\nThe U.S. military said the five U.S. soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in the Baghdad area, where thousands of American forces have taken to the streets with their Iraqi counterparts as part of the operation to quell sectarian violence in the city of 6 million people.\nA roadside bomb Wednesday killed two soldiers and wounded three others in southern Baghdad, while another blast north of the capital killed two soldiers and wounded one, the military said. The fifth soldier was killed Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in eastern Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite part of the city, the military said.\nThe four British deaths – the biggest loss of life for British forces in more than four months – came a day after Iran released 15 British sailors seized two weeks ago off the Iraqi coast.\nThe British patrol struck a roadside bomb and was hit by small-arms fire about 2 a.m. in the Hayaniyah district in western Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, British military spokeswoman Capt. Katie Brown said.\nIn addition to the deaths of the British soldiers and the Kuwaiti civilian interpreter, another British soldier was seriously wounded in the attack, Brown said.\n“Now it is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists that were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident,” Blair said.\nThe four deaths came as Britain celebrated the return home of 15 sailors and marines who had been held for 13 days by Iran in an incident that raised tensions between London and Tehran, as well as throughout the Middle East.\n“Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 service personnel so today we are also grieving and mourning for the loss of our soldiers in Basra, who were killed as the result of a terrorist act,” Blair said.\nThe Basra explosion created a 3-foot-deep crater. Hours after the attack, the helmet of a British soldier was still in the streets as well as dozens of spent bullets.\nPolice in Basra said the British patrol had earlier detained 1st Lt. Haidar al-Jazaeri of the Interior Ministry’s Major Crimes unit, and were on their way back when they were attacked.\nFour British forces were killed on Nov. 12 in an attack on a Multinational Forces boat patrol on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. Ten Britons also died in the Jan. 30, 2006, crash of a Hercules transport plane north of Baghdad.\nOverall, the deaths raised to 140 the number of British forces to die in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion and to 109 the number killed in combat.\nBlair has announced that Britain will withdraw about 1,600 troops from Iraq over the next few months and hopes to make other cuts to its 7,100-strong contingent by late summer.\nThe U.S. military issued only a brief statement saying the helicopter went down and that the incident was under investigation.\nAn Iraqi army official said earlier that a Black Hawk helicopter had gone down after it came under fire at about 7:30 a.m. near the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad.\nIt was the ninth U.S. helicopter to go down in Iraq this year, raising concern among the military that insurgents are using more sophisticated weapons or have figured out how to use the old arms in new and effective ways.