Naseer Al-Nahr, Arab News Staff

BAGHDAD, 3 January 2003 — Iraqi guerrillas shot down a US military helicopter west of Baghdad yesterday, killing one soldier and wounding another while Arab gunmen shot and killed a Kurd amid rising ethnic tensions in the northern city of Kirkuk.

In Baghdad, US Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said enemy fire likely brought down the helicopter. The OH-58 Kiowa Warrior crashed near Fallujah. Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division “are fairly convinced that it was enemy fire,” Kimmitt said.

Rebels have previously shot at and brought down US helicopters elsewhere in the area, the heartland of support for Saddam Hussein.

After the downing of the chopper, US soldiers swept through Fallujah, blocking off streets and searching shops and homes as helicopters circled above.

US helicopters have crashed or made emergency landings several times in recent months. In the deadliest single attack on US forces since the Iraq invasion began in March, 17 soldiers were killed when two Black Hawk helicopters collided above Mosul in what the military called a likely grenade attack.

On Thursday, a Black Hawk made an emergency landing near Qarayah, in northern Iraq, but the military said the cause was a tail rotor problem. One person was hurt.

In Kirkuk, Arab gunmen killed one Kurd and wounded another on Thursday night as they were walking in an Arab neighborhood, police chief Gen. Turhan Youssef said. Afterward, there was a shootout between Arabs and police, who killed two attackers and wounded several, said Jalal Jawher, local head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.

Tensions in Kirkuk have been high since an attack Wednesday on Arab and Turkmen protesters demanding that Kirkuk remain under the administration of a central Iraqi government.

The city’s 1 million-plus residents are divided in roughly equal parts among three ethnic groups — Arab, Turkmen and Kurd.

Some Kurds have been calling for Kirkuk to join autonomous Kurdistan, a Switzerland-sized area of northern Iraq where Kurds have ruled themselves since the end of the 1991 Gulf War under US-led aerial protection.

In Mosul, a minor Baath Party official and Saddam-appointed dean of political science of Mosul University was kidnapped and killed. Adel Jabar Abid Mustafa was taken from his home Wednesday night and his body was found Thursday with two gunshots to his head, according to the dean’s brother, Salim Abid Mustafa.

Gunmen in Mosul have killed at least three judges appointed by Saddam’s regime, as well as officers in a new Iraqi police force.

Also yesterday, a truck traveling toward Baghdad International Airport flipped on its side, killing one soldier and injuring six others, the military said. The cause was under investigation.

An oil tanker erupted in flames near a U.S. military base on the road to the western town of Ramadi, and a military statement said it was in a convoy that was attacked with a roadside bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire. Three American soldiers suffered burns and shrapnel wounds.

US soldiers, meanwhile, captured Abu Mohammed, who is believed to be moving foreign fighters and cash through a tense area west of Baghdad.

— Additional input from agencies