US pilots missing in Iraq crash

Two US pilots are missing after their helicopter crashed during a search and rescue mission in the Iraqi city of Mosul, US officials have said.

The helicopter crashed into the Tigris river while searching for a US soldier whose boat capsized while on patrol.

One report from the town said the Kiowa Warrior helicopter appeared to have hit a power line.

Another helicopter crashed near Mosul on Friday killing two crew members. The cause has not yet been determined.

US troops and Iraqi police looking for the missing pilots have sealed off the area while the search goes on.

An Iraqi policeman manning one of the checkpoints was killed in a drive-by shooting, witnesses said.

US officials said two Iraqi police officers and an Iraqi translator who were all on the boat with the missing soldier died but three other US soldiers survived.

Soldiers killed

On Saturday, six US soldiers died in separate attacks in Iraq:

• One died from wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his armoured vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade in the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad

• Three were killed in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, after an improvised car bomb blew up at a US checkpoint

• Two died when a roadside bomb detonated as their convoy drove near the flashpoint town of Falluja.

An earlier attack in Samarra also left four Iraqis dead and dozens injured.

Despite the continuing violence, the top US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, denied that coalition forces were becoming stuck in a quagmire.

"Absolutely not," he told the AFP news agency. "I think what we're seeing overall across the country is a reasonable decrease in the number of engagements."