The World - News from Jan. 24, 1988

A top Iraqi army commander and members of his staff were killed in a helicopter crash in a mountainous region of northern Iraq, state-run Baghdad radio reported. Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Ibrahim al Hadithi, head of the 5th Army Corps, which is in charge of defending the strategic Kirkuk oil fields, was killed, along with an unspecified number of fellow officers and two pilots, the report said. In Tehran, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said Iranian anti-aircraft gunners shot down the copter. Iraq blamed the crash on “technical reasons.”