Two British helicopters crash near Taji, killing 2 and injuring 5

Above: British Royal Marines disembark from Puma helicopters on the Iraqi al-Faw peninsula in 2003. The helicopters in today's incident came down in the early hours of the morning in a rural area southwest of Taji, home to a huge American military base in an area where coalition aircraft have often come under fire from insurgents.

An SAS soldier on a covert operational mission north of Baghdad was killed along with one of the air crew taking him on a flight in an RAF Puma helicopter, when two British helicopters collided late last night.

The mid-air disaster, which took place at about 11pm, occurred when the one of the helicopters flew into the other while they were conducting the same operation. Both managed to crash land a few miles north of Baghdad in an area controlled by the American military...

An operation was under way tonight to try to retrieve the two Puma helicopters which had sensitive equipment on board as they were both assigned for special forces operations.

Read the rest at the Times of London

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Note: This post has been updated. Initial wire service stories, including the one used here, had said that U.S. helicopters were involved.