- An Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb on a highway in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said police Lt. Qassim Mohamed.
- A bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Abu al-Khasib, a town near Basra in southern Iraq. Two charred bodies were pulled from a destroyed car and two Iraqis were injured, said police Col. Karim al-Zeidi. It was not immediately clear whether the vehicle had been carrying the bomb.
- In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army convoy, wounding three soldiers, said Dr. Bahaaldin al-Bakri at the city's hospital.
The violence was part of a surge of militant attacks that have caused heavy casualties in recent weeks, ending a relative lull since Iraqis voted in historic Jan. 30 elections. Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a Cabinet that will include members of the Sunni minority, believed to be the driving force behind the insurgency.
Also, a car bomb ripped through a crowded Shiite mosque in Baghdad during midday prayers Friday, killing 12 people and wounding 22, police and hospital officials said.
The bomb exploded at Al-Subeih mosque in the New Baghdad neighborhood, police Col. Ahmed Aboud said. Witnesses said the vehicle used in the attack had been parked outside the building since the morning.
After the blast, frantic worshippers searched through rubble for loved ones, and women wailed and beat their chests in grief. Body parts were strewn at the scene among piles of bricks, shattered glass and pools of blood. One man clutched a child's foot, shaking and weeping.
Two militant groups claimed responsibility for shooting down the helicopter and released video to support their claims.
A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq posted footage on the Internet showing militants capturing and shooting the Bulgarian pilot, found lying in the grass near burning wreckage and charred bodies.
Heli Air, the Bulgarian company that owns the helicopter, confirmed Friday the man seen shot in the footage was pilot Lyubomir Kostov.
Al-Jazeera broadcast another video from a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Army in Iraq that showed the helicopter flying about 100 feet above the ground. At one point, the camera suddenly shook, swinging down to show the ground near the cameraman's feet - apparently as a missile hit the helicopter.
When the camera turned back toward the sky, the helicopter was in flames, arcing toward the ground and trailing a pall of black smoke.
There was no independent confirmation of the authenticity of either video.
The chartered flight between Baghdad and Tikrit was believed to be the first civilian aircraft shot down in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. A spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq said an American medevac team arrived at the site within a half hour of Thursday's crash and found no survivors.
Al-Jazeera television aired part of another video Friday in which it said a militant group was threatening to kill three kidnapped Romanian journalists and their Iraqi-American translator unless Romanian troops leave the country within four days.
That video showed the three Romanians - Marie Jeanne Ion, Sorin Dumitru Miscoci and Ovidiu Ohanesian - sitting cross-legged against a wall with their hands chained. A man said to be their translator, Mohammed Monaf, was shown sitting alone, hands bound. Gunmen stood on either side of him, pointing an automatic rifle and a pistol at his head.
The four were kidnapped March 28 near their Baghdad hotel shortly after interviewing interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. They appeared a day later in a video aired on Al-Jazeera.
More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since April 2004, and at least 17 are believed to still be in the hands of their captors. More than 30 others were killed by their kidnappers.
