Thirteen US troops have died after their helicopter crashed northeast of Baghdad, a military spokeswoman said.

"A military helicopter went down in the afternoon today northeast of Baghdad with 13 troops on board," Josslyn L. Aberle, a US lieutenant colonel, said on Saturday evening.

 A separate military statement on Saturday said that all 13 people on board "were killed".
 
Earlier on Saturday the military announced the deaths of three  other soldiers in different attacks across Iraq.
 
Aberle said that of the 13 soldiers, "nine were passengers and four were crew members."
 
The statement said emergency coalition forces had secured the crash site and added: "This incident is under investigation."

The latest fatalities from the helicopter crash brought the US military's total losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,039, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

Other crashes

The crash came less than two months after a Sea Knight helicopter went down in the western Sunni Anbar province on December 3.

Four of the 16 military personnel on board were killed in the crash which occurred on the shore of Qadisiyah lake.

The worst US helicopter crash of the Iraq war was on November 15, 2003 and killed 17 soldiers when two UH-60 Blackhawks crashed west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Two weeks earlier 16 US soldiers died when their CH-47 Chinook was shot down by a ground-to-air missile near Fallujah in Anbar province.

Photo caption

Map of Iraq