BAGHDAD, Jan 26: Hopes were bleak on Monday of recovering alive three US soldiers lost when a boat capsized and a helicopter crashed in northern Iraq.

The helicopter went down on Sunday in the Tigris river near the main northern city of Mosul on a rescue mission after the US boat overturned in the afternoon, leaving two Iraqi police and a translator dead.

Search operations were continuing Monday for the two US pilots and boat crewman. A US military spokesman said rescue teams had briefly come under small-arms fire but there were no casualties.

An investigation is under way into the crash, but it is not believed to have been caused by hostile fire. A senior police official in Mosul said the Kiowa Warrior helicopter had flown at low altitude into towing cables strung across the swollen river, which runs from Turkey to Syria before flowing south across Iraq to the Gulf. -AFP