IN IRAQ Developments

The latest developments in Iraq:
A U.S. security company helicopter crashed Tuesday as it flew over a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad where insurgents and Iraqi security troops fought a prolonged gunbattle, and a U.S. official said five American civilians on board were killed. A senior Iraqi military official said the aircraft was shot down, but this was disputed by a U.S. military official in Washington. The Iraqi said the helicopter was hit by a machine gunner over the Fadhil neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River, while the American official said there was no indication in initial reports that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot down.
Iraqi authorities found 19 bodies of young men scattered around Baghdad on Tuesday, a sharp drop from the scores found each day several weeks ago. The reported daily body count for the last week or so has hovered around 30 or lower. The dead bodies of late also have not shown signs of torture often associated with Shiite Muslim militias, morgue and hospital officials say. Officials cautioned that the casualty figures are preliminary and sketchy. Previous drops in Baghdad violence have been followed by upsurges.
A roadside bomb hidden among dead bodies exploded as ABC News anchor Chris Cuomo was passing by Tuesday, wounding soldiers in his convoy and narrowly missing Cuomo, who is on assignment in Iraq. The youngest son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and younger brother of state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was with the 410th Military Police Company when their patrol of four armored humvees was hit on the way to northwest Baghdad. "We got very lucky. I'm probably in shock," Cuomo, 36, told the New York Daily News by phone from Iraq. "But almost as soon as it happened, [the soldiers] were right into their game. That really helped to suppress what would have been paralyzing fear for me."
Source: Combined dispatches