Militants shoot down Iraqi helicopter, occupy northern town

Militants shot down a helicopter on Saturday and briefly occupied a town, in an escalating turf war with Iraq's government that has killed at least 25 people in two days, police said. All four crew members were killed when their helicopter was downed during a reconnaissance flight over the town of Karma in Iraq's western province of Anbar, where the army is engaged in a standoff with anti-government fighters.
Sunni Islamist insurgents have been gaining ground in Iraq over the past year and in recent weeks overran several towns, raising the stakes in a conflict against the Shia-led government that made last year the deadliest since sectarian civil strife began to abate in 2008.
Late on Friday, dozens of militants in SUVs drove into the small town of al-Sainiyah, near Baiji, some 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, after bombing the local police headquarters, and fought troops for several hours overnight, witnesses said.
At least four policemen and two Sunni government-backed militia members were killed in the fighting, officials said.
The militants raised the black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over government buildings in the town, recording their victory on video, before withdrawing on Saturday morning.
"The attack started at 7:30 pm (Friday) when we heard intense gunfire and successive mortar explosions near the police department. This situation lasted for around three hours," a resident called Yasser told Reuters by telephone. He said the militants drove around the town all night, blasting religious anthems glorifying ISIL from their cars.
Police sources said the militants came from Anbar province, where the Iraqi army has been laying siege to the city of Falluja and shelling it since early this year, when ISIL and other militant groups took over.
A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives blew himself up at the entrance to a military base in the east of Anbar's capital, Ramadi, killing at least six people on Saturday, security sources said.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the city in recent weeks, fearing an all-out ground offensive to retake Falluja, the site of some of the fiercest battles with US forces following the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In a statement late on Saturday, the Ministry of Defence said it was suspending military operations on Falluja until 6 am on Monday to give local tribes another chance to expel militants themselves.
The Defence Ministry warned militants against taking advantage of the detente to carry out attacks against the armed forces, civilians, government installations and hospitals in order to give the impression the government had not kept its word.