A U.S. soldier was killed and a second wounded in northern Iraq early Friday morning when a roadside bomb went off near their vehicle, a US military statement said. The explosive device detonated north of Tel Afar while the soldiers were on a patrol.
Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded during Friday prayers at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 20, police said. The blast took place during midday prayers at Al-Subeih mosque, in the capital's eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, said police Col. Ahmed Aboud. According to The AP, witnesses said a car parked outside the building since the morning exploded.
One section of the mosque collapsed and body parts littered the ground.
Meanwhile, Muslim fighters, who shot down a Russian-made helicopter carrying 11 people with missile fire north of Baghdad Thursday, captured and executed a crew member who survived the crash. The dead from the crash included six American bodyguards for U.S. diplomats.
An Internet statement by the Islamic Army in Iraq was accompanied by a video showing the repeated shooting of a man who was found in tall grass and forced to stand up and walk. The video showed burning wreckage just before the shooting.
"One of the crew members was captured and killed," the statement said.
The man who was shot to death in a grassy field spoke English with an accent and was wearing a blue flight suit, indicating he was one of the three Bulgarian crew members. Two Fijian helicopter security guards were also on board the flight.
The video also showed two charred bodies near the burning wreckage.
The Islamic Army statement said it killed the survivor "in revenge for the Muslims who have been killed in cold blood in the mosques of tireless Fallujah before the eyes of the world and on television screens, without anyone condemning them."
In the video, armed men come across the injured man in the flight suit. "Stand up! Stand up!" they order the man, who says "Give me a hand." Then he says that his leg is broken.
Later, he was shown as bullets hitting his body as he falls backward into the grass.
