BAGHDAD, Jan 8: A US UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed in northern Iraq on Saturday night, killing all 12 aboard in one of the worst incidents of its kind since the war began in 2003, the US military said on Sunday. Four crew and eight passengers were listed as being aboard, the military said in a statement, adding that the cause of the crash was under investigation.

The helicopter went down in a sparsely populated area 12km east of the town of Tal Afar shortly before midnight on Saturday. It had been flying between bases in northern Iraq when communications were lost with the aircraft, the statement said.

An immediate search and rescue operation was launched from nearby military bases and the helicopter was located at midday on Sunday.

It was the worst helicopter crash since January 2005, when a US transport helicopter crashed close to the Jordanian border in Anbar province, western Iraq, killing 30 Marines and one sailor.

Eleven people, including six US civilians, were killed last April when their commercial helicopter was shot down.

Dozens of US-led forces have been killed in helicopter crashes since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, some in accidents and some after being fired on by insurgents with shoulder-fired missiles or small arms.

Faced with dangerous roads and vast tracts of desert, the military uses helicopters as its main means of transport to move troops and supplies between bases dotted around the country.

In some of the worst incidents, two US Black Hawk helicopters collided under fire in Mosul in November 2003, killing 17 soldiers, a week after another Black Hawk was shot down killing six.

A Black Hawk was shot down near Falluja in January 2004, killing all nine on board.

—Reuters