Iraqi Freedom casualties

[David]

Friday, two U.S. Marines were killed in combat, Pentagon officials said. One of the slain was from the U.S. 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Lt. Col. Neal Peckham, a British military spokesman, said Friday.

Details of the incident were unclear. However, a fellow soldier, along with an Associated Press reporter, said the Marine was shot in the stomach while his company was patrolling around a burning oil pumping station in southern Iraq.
The second Marine was killed during fighting to secure the Iraqi port town of Umm Qasr. The two Marines were the first combat deaths in the war.

On Thursday, coalition forces suffered their first known noncombat casualties of the war when 12 U.S. and British troops were killed as a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter went down inside Kuwait.

The officials said the helicopter was a CH-46E Sea Knight medium-lift craft that did not come under hostile fire. It carried eight British commandos and a crew of four Americans. None survived.