War crimes court established for Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's U.S.-appointed interim government established a war crimes tribunal Wednesday to try former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, and two U.S. soldiers were killed and four wounded in a northern city.\nGuerrillas also struck at an Air Force C-17 transport plane with a ground-fired missile, forcing it to return to Baghdad early Tuesday, a senior Pentagon official said. In Baghdad, the U.S. military said the plane reported an engine explosion on takeoff and one of the 16 people on board was slightly injured.\nAbdel-Aziz al-Hakim, president of Iraq's Governing Council, said the new tribunal will cover crimes committed from July 17, 1968 -- the day Saddam's Baath Party came to power -- until May 1, 2003 -- the day President Bush declared major hostilities over.\nThe Associated Press first reported Friday that Iraq would create a war crimes tribunal.\nThe tribunal will try cases stemming from mass executions of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, as well as the suppression of uprisings by Kurds and Shiite Muslims after the 1991 Gulf War.\nAl-Hakim said it would also try cases committed against Iran -- with which Iraq fought a bloody 1980-88 war -- and against Kuwait, which Iraq invaded in 1990, sparking the Gulf War.\nU.S. authorities are holding several dozen of Saddam's top aides who could be tried by the new tribunal. These include Ali Hassan al-Majid -- known as "Chemical Ali" -- who gained notoriety for his savage campaign against Kurds.\nNoor al-Din, a former appeals court judge, said the tribunal could try Saddam, who has eluded capture, in absentia.\nIn the northern city of Mosul, meanwhile, one soldier from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division died and another was wounded when gunmen fired on troops guarding a gasoline station. U.S. soldiers killed one assailant, a military spokesman said.\nWitnesses said the attackers escaped and U.S. troops opened fire on passing cars, killing a driver. Residents identified the dead passenger as a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a major pro-American political party. \nA few hours later, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb and opened fire on a U.S. military convoy in the city, killing another U.S. soldier and wounding three others, the spokesman said.\nThe deaths brought to 450 the number of American troops who have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion on March 20. Of those, 310 have died as a result of hostile action. The British military has reported 52 deaths; Italy, 17; Spain, eight, and Denmark, Ukraine and Poland one each.\nThere has been an upsurge of attacks in Mosul, which was largely quiet in the months following the invasion. The predominantly Sunni Muslim city is home to many former soldiers and party loyalists of Saddam, but sits outside the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad, where the majority of attacks on American forces have occurred since Saddam's ouster. U.S. troops killed Saddam's sons, Odai and Qusai, in Mosul in July.\nIn Madrid, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar announced the arrests of suspects in the slaying of seven Spanish intelligence agents in an ambush south of Baghdad on Nov. 29. The U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division said in a statement that 41 "enemy personnel," including the leader of the cell that carried out the attack, were detained.\nIn the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, U.S. troops and Iraqi police arrested 29 people, including five policemen, who were suspected of ties to Saddam, said Adnan Mohammed Saleh, a city police officer. Saleh said the policemen were suspected of passing intelligence to anti-occupation guerrillas.\nSome coalition officials have recently warned the new U.S.-sponsored Iraqi security forces are being infiltrated by Saddam loyalists who are providing the guerrillas with information on occupation troops.\nIn northern Iraq, an Apache helicopter made an emergency landing 13 miles south of Mosul on Wednesday. A military spokesman said a technical problem caused a fire in the engine and the crew was safe.\nA U.S. Army helicopter made an emergency landing near the central town of Fallujah on Tuesday. Neither of the two crewmen was injured. The U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday the helicopter was likely brought down by small-arms fire or a projectile fired from the ground.\nIt was the fifth U.S. helicopter downed in Iraq in just over five weeks.