An Italian army helicopter has crashed southeast of the Iraqi city of Nassiriya, killing four Italians, Italy's military command said on Tuesday. The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Italy has some 3,000 forces in Iraq, the fourth largest contingent after the United States, Britain and South Korea. It was the third aircraft to go down in Iraq within a week, Reuters reported. Four Americans and an Iraqi were killed when an Iraqi Air Force plane went down in eastern Iraq on Monday, probably in a sandstorm, a spokesman for Iraq's Defence Ministry said. Last Thursday, an OH-58 surveillance helicopter was shot down by small arms fire near the town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, killing both American soldiers on board. More than a dozen U.S. helicopters have been brought down in Iraq over the past two years, either by insurgent ground fire, bad weather or malfunctions.
