A US army reconnaissance helicopter went down in northern Mosul, Iraq, today and its two pilots were killed, the US military said, while a senior officer said it may have been shot down.

OCCUPYING troops could be embroiled in Iraq for decades, a major report claimed yesterday.

A top US commander in Iraq said today that he has “absolutely no reason to believe” that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, died in a weekend raid in Mosul.