6 US Soldiers killed over Weekend, Over a Dozen Wounded; 2 Iraqi police dead, dozens wounded; Helicopter Crash

The low-grade guerrilla war against the US military continued at a heated pace over the weekend..

On Sunday, a soldier died of wounds inflicted by a rocket-propelled grenade attack near Beiji, north of Baghdad..

In a separate incident, according to the WP, a riverboat capsized while on patrol, and one out of the 4 US soldiers on board went missing, in the north near Mosul early on Sunday. The US military then sent a helicopter out to look for the lost soldier, and the helicopter went down with its two crewmen (the cause of the crash is unknown). Then an Iraqi police team secured the region for a search for the helicopter and one of them was killed at a makeshift checkpoint in a drive-by shooting. Arriving US troops met small arms fire. Two Iraqi police and a translator were killed in the same region, either, as the WP says, in the capsizing incident, or, as wire services suggested, in a separate one. This area seems to be like the Bermuda Triangle or something.

On Saturday, guerrillas near Khaldiyah in the west detonated a car bomb, killing 3 US troops and wounding 6; they wounded 8 Iraqis, as well. On the same day, guerrillas drove a car bomb into a military checkpoint, near Fallujah, killing another 3 US soldiers and wounding six. A third attack, at Samarra north of Baghdad, narrowly missed a US convoy but killed 4 Iraqis and wounded 40.