At Least 4 Dead in U.S. Helicopter Crash in Iraq...

An American Black Hawk crashed near Saddam Hussein's hometown in Iraq Friday, killing six people on board in the second deadly downing of a U.S. helicopter in five days.

American officers based at one of Saddam's former palaces in Tikrit, close to where the helicopter crashed, said it was not yet known whether guerrillas had shot it down.

"At approximately 9 a.m. this morning a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter went down," Major Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division told reporters. "At this stage we don't know if it was due to mechanical failure or another reason."

Other helicopters hovered above the downed craft near the northern town of Tikrit, a hotbed of anti-U.S. sentiment.

The Black Hawk is the U.S. Army's front-line utility helicopter, designed to carry 11 combat-ready assault troops, and is also used for medical evacuations.

Last Sunday, guerrillas shot down a U.S. Chinook helicopter west of Baghdad as it carried troops on a rest and recreation break, killing 16 American soldiers in the deadliest single strike on U.S.-led forces since they invaded to oust Saddam.

On Oct. 25, guerrillas brought down a Black Hawk in Tikrit, hitting one of its engines with a rocket-propelled grenade. The helicopter made an emergency landing, and all five crew members escaped before it was engulfed in flames.

SOLDIER KILLED IN AMBUSH

In the northern city of Mosul, an ambush on a convoy killed one soldier and wounded six others Friday, Sergeant Kelly Tyler of the 101st Airborne Division told Reuters. In a separate attack in the town, a roadside bomb wounded three U.S. soldiers.

The ambush brought to at least 140 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action since Washington declared major combat over on May 1 -- more than the 114 killed during the invasion in March and April.

Thursday, a Polish major was shot dead south of Baghdad, the first soldier from a multinational division policing central Iraq to be killed in action.

Friday morning in Baghdad, guerrillas with "long beards" also fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. tank and a civilian vehicle with American soldiers inside, wounding one soldier and an Iraqi boy, witnesses said.

The mounting U.S. death toll in Iraq and the failure to find Saddam's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction have put pressure on President Bush, bidding for re-election next year.

In a speech in Washington, Bush demanded democracy and liberty in the Middle East as he dismissed critics of the war in Iraq that ousted Saddam.

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said Thursday.

In his foreign policy address to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush challenged Iran and Syria by name as well as close U.S. ally Egypt to adopt democracy, and vowed Washington would not support Arab states that rejected liberty.

The United States has accused both Syria and Iran of not doing enough to stop Muslim militants crossing into Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney vowed Washington would persevere in Iraq until all guerrillas were defeated.

"Freedom still has enemies in Iraq," Cheney told a fund-raising gathering in Denver Thursday.