The CH-46 Sea Knight was flying over Karma, an Iraqi insurgent base near Falluja.
D. grapevine to Kirk Johnson, the young Arabic speaker who had asked to be transferred to Falluja.
The protest in Falluja was the latest in a series held in predominantly Sunni regions of Iraq.
On Tuesday, tribal leaders in Abu Ghraib and Falluja told the Iraqi government that al-Masri was killed in fighting.
According to an Iraqi official who has negotiated with insurgents in Falluja, about half of the Iraqis killed were women and children.
The commanders noted that during the first Falluja offensive in April this year there was an upsurge of violence in Mosul.
For example, he said, one recent strike near Falluja, a volatile city west of Baghdad, began with a mortar and rocket attack.
Al-Maliki on Friday said the violence in Falluja doesn't surprise his administration.
Charles Heyman, senior defence analyst at Jane's Consultancy Group, said the Black Watch may face even greater risk as US forces prepare to attack Falluja.
Most of the US soldiers have been killed in attacks on road convoys, firefights in the Sunni-dominated towns of Falluja and Ramadi and battles in and around Baghdad.
Steven Faulkenburg, 45, of Huntingburg, Indiana -- was killed Tuesday by a gunshot wound to the head while conducting combat operations in Falluja, Army sources said.
But Britain's former special representative to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, said failing to act in Falluja could mean more attacks in the run-up to the January elections.
In the latest clashes, gunmen and Iraqi federal police faced off Thursday night in the city of Falluja, a predominantly Sunni city in Iraq's Anbar province, Iraqi police told CNN.
By nightfall Friday, Iraqi soldiers withdrew from several security posts in and around the city and went back to their main military headquarters in Falluja, according to police officials in the city.
Iraq's interim government plans to hold elections for a transitional parliament in January, and the offensive against insurgents in Falluja was meant to restore interim government control over that area ahead of the vote.
The intelligence chief is the second prominent Iraq figure to be murdered so far this year, after an opposition member of parliament was killed in the city of Falluja in the western province of Anbar.
Police in the nearby Anbar city of Falluja said the gathering of mourners was for the principal of a technical school in the village of Abu Minasir in Abu Ghraib, who was shot dead Monday.
On March 31, 2004, four Americans working as guards for the private security company Blackwater were ambushed and killed by insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja, the charred remains of two of them dragged away by a mob and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
应用推荐