By Dogen Hannah,Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed in northern Iraq, killing all 12 people aboard, and five Marines were killed in western Iraq, the U.S. military announced Sunday.

The helicopter went down shortly before midnight Saturday in a sparsely populated area about seven miles east of Tal Afar. It was one of two helicopters traveling between bases in northern Iraq on a stormy night.

“This was a night operation under adverse weather, but we’re not going to speculate on the cause,” said Capt. William Roberts Jr., a spokesmen for the U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq.

Flight records indicated that four crewmembers and eight passengers were aboard. All were U.S. citizens, but it was not yet known if all were military personnel, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, another coalition spokesman.

“They’re just being identified,” Johnson said.

The helicopter and others were on a mission supporting Task Force Band of Brothers, the U.S. military element that oversees operations in northern Iraq, when communication was lost with one aircraft. The military immediately launched a search and rescue operation, which found the helicopter’s wreckage around noon Sunday.

The worst helicopter crash in the almost three-year-old war was the Jan. 26, 2005, crash of a CH-53 Sea Stallion in bad weather in western Iraq that killed 31 U.S. service members.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military announced the deaths of five Marines, two of whom had died Saturday in combat in western Iraq.

Three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force were killed Sunday by small-arms fire in separate attacks in Fallujah.

On Saturday, a Marine assigned to the same unit was killed near Ferris when his vehicle was struck by an improvised bomb.

Also Saturday, a Marine assigned to the 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force was killed near al Karmah when his vehicle was struck by an improvised bomb.

The U.S. military was withholding the Marines’ names, pending notification of their next of kin.

Meanwhile on Sunday, the Muslim Scholars Association, a prominent Sunni organization, held a news conference to protest a pre-dawn raid by U.S. forces on the group’s offices in the Umm al-Qura mosque complex in Baghdad.

Spokesman Muthana Harith al-Dhari said the raid was sacrilegious and that soldiers destroyed and removed equipment and arrested six people.

Johnson, the U.S. military spokesman, said a tip from an Iraqi that “there was activity in the mosque that may be related to a significant terrorist-related activity” sparked the raid. It was undertaken at 3 a.m. to minimize its impact on worshippers and people nearby, he said.

Also Sunday:

-Gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi police convoy in northwest Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding 13.

-An improvised bomb exploded near pedestrians in a city in Diyala province east of Baghdad, killing one and wounding three.

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(Hannah reports for the Contra Costa Times. Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondent Muhammad al-Awsy contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2006, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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