BAGHDAD — A U.S. transport helicopter crashed near an air base in western Iraq on Tuesday, killing five troopers, the military said, on a day that suicide bombers targeting a small Kurdish sect killed at least 175 people.
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 [—] three in an explosion near their vehicle Monday in the northwestern Ninevah province. The fourth died of wounds suffered in Baghdad.
The nine 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.
Four suicide bombers struck nearly simultaneously at communities of a small Kurdish sect near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, late Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 more, Iraqi military and local officials said.
Members of the Yazidis, an ancient religious community in the region, are considered infidels by some Muslims. The sect has been under fire since some members stoned a Yazidi teenager to death in April. She had converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend, and police said 18-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad was killed by relatives.
Yazidis regard marriage outside their faith as a sin punishable by ostracism, or even death, to restore lost honor.
Two weeks after the Yazidi woman was stoned to death, gunmen killed 23 Yazidis after stopping their bus and separating out followers of other faiths in what was believed to have been retaliation for the woman’s death.
The bombings came as extremists staged other bold attacks: leveling a key bridge outside Baghdad and abducting five officials from an Oil Ministry compound in the capital in a raid using gunmen dressed as security officers.
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 Baqouba and Anbar province over the past several weeks.
Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly 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, Donnelly said.
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