US military helicopters killed eight Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers and wounded six others in northern Iraq today in what appeared to be a "friendly fire" incident, Kurdish officials said.
The US military said it killed five armed men in an air strike in the northern city of Mosul after US troops hunting suspected al Qaeda militants there came under fire from a bunker near the building they were targeting.
The men, who had ignored warnings in Arabic and Kurdish to put down their weapons, turned out to be Kurdish policemen, the military said in a statement, adding that US forces expressed their "deepest sympathies" to the families of the victims.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who is also a close US ally, has asked the Americans for more information on the incident, which comes as Kurdish soldiers prepare to deploy in Baghdad as part of a US-backed plan to secure the capital.
The US military said this week it was adjusting helicopter tactics in Iraq after at least four were shot down in two weeks. Today an al Qaeda-linked group released a video of what it said was the downing of a US helicopter in Iraq this week, which killed all seven crew and passengers.
The video, posted on a Web site used by insurgents, showed an apparent missile hitting a twin-rotor helicopter that was then seen engulfed in flames and crashing behind distant trees.
The military is probing the crash of a CH-46 Sea Knight, the Marine version of the twin-rotor Chinook, on Wednesday.