The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Baghdad

At least 33 people were killed in chopper crash and different incidence in Iraq.

A Russian made Mi-17 helicopter belonging to the Iraqi military has crashed in northern Iraq, killing eight people on board including a US service person, a US military spokesman said on Tuesday.

"Recovery operations have been completed and there are no survivors," Lieutenant Michael Street told AFP.

Street said there was one coalition force member among the eight people on board.

He identified the Iraqi aircraft as an Mi-17 helicopter. The helicopter went missing on Monday. Its wreckage was found on Tuesday near a village west of the northern oil refinery town of Baiji, a defence ministry official told AFP. The helicopter had lifted off from the Al-Sinya base near Baiji and was heading to the main northern city of Mosul at the time of the crash, an officer from Salaheddin provincial police said. He said the cause of the crash remained unclear but added "there was a sandstorm yesterday." The last reported contact with the helicopter was at 2:40 pm (1140 GMT) on Monday, Street said.

Meanwhile, At least 23 people were killed in bomb attacks and shootings across Iraq as US troops announced the discovery of a mass grave with the bodies of 14 men who had been bound and shot in the head.

The deadliest attacks were in Baghdad, where at least 19 people were killed in two car bombings, while an Iraqi police chief was killed in an ambush in the southern port city of Basra.

Government figures issued on Saturday showed that the total number of Iraqis killed in February was up by 33 percent over the previous month, reversing six months of falling death tolls.

In the bloodiest attack on Monday, at least 15 people were killed and 45 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a labour ministry building in a commercial area of Baghdad's Bab al-Muazam neighbourhood, a security official said.

The injured included ministry employees and students from the nearby Baghdad University, the official said.

The attack came just hours after a car bomb hit an Iraqi army checkpoint at Maisaloon Square in eastern Baghdad, killing four people and damaging three nearby houses, security and medical officials said.

At least 12 people were injured. In the restive southern port city of Basra, gunmen ambushed a top provincial police chief's convoy and shot him and his three bodyguards dead, police said.