A US military helicopter crashed in a field north of Baghdad and a roadside explosion killed two civilians in a separate attack in the capital today.
It is unclear whether anyone was killed when the Apache attack helicopter went down in Mishahda, 20 miles north of the capital.
The roadside bomb in Baghdad exploded near a police patrol at Antar Square in the capital's northern Azamiyah neighbourhood. A woman was among the two dead and another person was wounded.
The attack followed three suicide bombers who struck a police headquarters, an army base and a hospital around Mosul yesterday, killing 33 people in a setback to efforts to rebuild the northern city's police force.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attacks in Mosul - the country's third-largest city.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, said it may take as long as 12 years to defeat the insurgents. He said Iraq 's security forces would have to finish the job because American and foreign troops would have left the country by then.
He also acknowledged that US officials had met with insurgents in Iraq , after a newspaper reported that two recent meetings took place at a villa north of Baghdad.
Insurgent commanders "apparently came face-to-face" with four American officials during meetings on June 3rd and June 13th at a villa near Balad, about 25 miles north of Baghdad, The Sunday Timesreported.
When asked yesterday on NBC television's Meet the Pressabout the report of the two meetings, Mr Rumsfeld said "there have probably been many more than that".
He insisted the talks did not involve negotiations with al-Zarqawi and other suspected terrorists, but were rather facilitating efforts by the Shiite-led government to reach out to minority Sunni Arabs, who were believed to be the driving force behind the insurgency.
AP