U.S. soldiers blindfold Iraqi detainees in Tikrit (AFP)

BAQUBA, Iraq, January 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - At least five people were killed and 37 injured Friday, January 9, in an explosion outside a Shiite mosque in the town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, after the end of Friday prayers, as U.S. forces carried out a major raid in the northern town of Tikrit.

"Five people were killed and 37 people injured in an explosion near the Haj Sadek Banin mosque," Ziad Tarek, a doctor at the general hospital in Baquba, 60 kilometers (36 miles) from Baghdad, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Baquba, in Diyala province, is populated by a mixture of Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Major Raids Target Tikrit

Meanwhile, hundreds of U.S. occupation soldiers backed by air support clamped down on what they call “suspected insurgents” in a major raid Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit Friday as mortar attacks were reported against a Baghdad hotel used by foreign businessmen and contractors.

The latest developments came just hours after an apparent ground-to-air missile strike forced a U.S. Air Force cargo plane to make an emergency landing and a U.S. military helicopter crashed, killing all nine people on board.

In Tikrit, night raids involving 300 troops saw the capture of 13 men suspected of carrying out, funding and organizing attacks on occupation forces, according to Lieutenant Colonel Steve Russell, the operation's commander.

The suspects, several trying to flee their captors, were pulled from their homes, blindfolded and handcuffed as relatives looked on.

Bomb-making equipment, forging equipment used to produce fake police identity cards and small arms were recovered in what Russell described as a "good night".

"Tikrit will be a safer place tomorrow as a result," he told reporters.

Russell's battalion is in charge of patrolling the restive town, where many still support Saddam and where attacks on U.S. troops are a frequent occurrence.

But while deadly assaults on occupation forces are continuing elsewhere in the so-called Sunni triangle, in Tikrit they have decreased since the capture of Saddam December 13.

In Baghdad, Iraqi resistance activists early Friday fired two rocket-propelled grenades at a hotel used by foreign companies contracted by the U.S.-led occupation authority, but there were no casualties. The attack was the third on the building in under a month.

"The first and fourth floors were hit. No one was wounded," said a security guard of one of the companies hired by the coalition.

The attack happened at around 6 am (0300 GMT) on the Bourj al-Hayat hotel, protected from the street by cement barriers, which is close to offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party that rules northern Iraq's Arbil and Dohuk provinces.

On Thursday, nine soldiers were killed when a U.S. military UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in potato fields near the rebel town of Fallujah. U.S. Defense officials said they suspected hostile fire was involved.

"I heard a report that the pilot may have seen some sort of fire, and it may have hit a tail rotor," a senior defense official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said an investigation was underway.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, the U.S.-led occupation troops' deputy operations chief, said those on board were presumed U.S. soldiers. If confirmed, their deaths would take to 225 the number of American combat fatalities since U.S. President George W. Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1.

Bush said he was "saddened" by the latest loss of life, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

Kurds Win Autonomy Accord

A window of Bourj al-Hayat hotel near the entry hole left by a rocket propelled grenade

On the political front, Kurdish and Arab leaders huddled in northern Iraq to thrash out the future shape of the oil-rich nation as a Kurdish member of the interim Governing Council said virtual autonomy enjoyed by the Kurds would be enshrined in law until elections in 2005.

Efforts to resolve the prickly self-rule demands by Kurds in the northern Sulaimaniyah, Dohuk and Arbil provinces have produced agreement that autonomy will be enshrined in law until 2005, Governing Council member Judge Dara Nuraddin told AFP.

"In the fundamental law, Kurdistan will have the same legal status as it has now," he said about the region that has enjoyed virtual autonomy since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Kurdish demands for a federal zone have ignited deadly ethnic unrest in the region and stoked anxieties in neighboring countries, adding to the insurgency headaches which continue to blight post-war Iraq.