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Six US army soldiers and three marines escaped criminal charges but received administrative punishments for mistakenly burning Qur'ans and urinating on the corpses of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, US military officials said Monday.

US military leaders widely condemned the incident revealed earlier this year. The Qur'an burning triggered riots and retribution killings: two US troops were shot by an Afghan soldier and two US military advisers were gunned down at their desks at the interior ministry.

The soldiers were disciplined for the burning of Qur'ans earlier this year at a US base in Afghanistan, and the marines were punished for their participation in a video that showed them urinating on Taliban corpses.

Discipline against a Navy sailor in the Qur'an burnings was dismissed, and the Marine Corps said it would announce discipline against additional Marines in the urination case at a later date.

The exact punishments were not disclosed on Monday but could include demotions, extra duty or forfeiture of pay. They could also stall any future advancement and end the military careers of the nine.

Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said Hamid Karzai's office would review the decisions. News of the punishments came late at night in Afghanistan.

The religious books and other materials were thrown into a pit used to burn rubbish at Bagram air field, a major US base north of Kabul.

US officials said the holy books were pulled out by Afghan workers before they were destroyed. President Barack Obama later apologised to Karzai for the incident.

The urination video, which came to light in January and appeared on YouTube, showed four marines in full combat gear urinating on the bodies of three dead men. On Monday, the Marine Corps revealed that there were also photographs taken at the time. In the video, one marine looks down at the bodies and says, "Have a good day, buddy."

The unit involved fought in the southern Afghan province of Helmand for seven months before returning to its home base in North Carolina last September.

The Marine Corps said one marine pleaded guilty to urinating on the Taliban soldiers and posing for a photograph. Another marine pleaded guilty to wrongfully videotaping the incident and posing for a photograph and a third pleaded guilty to failing to report the mistreatment of human casualties and lying about it.

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KABUL, Afghanistan - Seven American troops and four Afghans died in a Black Hawk helicopter crash on Thursday in southern Afghanistan, the NATO military coalition said. The Taliban claimed their fighters shot down the aircraft.

The crash marked another deadly day for the U.S. in Afghanistan, less than a week after six American service members were gunned down, apparently by two members of the Afghan security forces they were training to take over the fight against the insurgency as international combat troops prepare to exit the country by the end of 2014.

The spike in American deaths and attacks by Afghan allies have stirred fresh doubts about the prospects for the U.S. plan to leave a capable Afghan government in place when most troops depart after more than a decade of war.

Spokesman Brig. Gen Gunter Katz said the NATO coalition is investigating the cause of Thursday's crash in Kandahar province. The coalition had no immediate comment on the insurgents' claim that they shot down the helicopter.

Kandahar is a traditional Taliban stronghold and the spiritual birthplace of the hardline Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan before being ousted in 2001 by the U.S.-led alliance for sheltering al-Qaida's terrorist leaders.

Among the dead were seven American service members, three members of Afghan security forces and one Afghan civilian interpreter, said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the coalition. He said there were no survivors of the crash.

He declined to give any details on the mission of the helicopter, a UH-60 Black Hawk.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said insurgent fighters shot down the helicopter in Kandahar province on Thursday morning.

"Nobody survived this," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone.

The helicopter was shot down in Kandahar's Shah Wali Kot district, which lies in the northern part of the province, said Ahmad Jawed Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial government said. He declined to give further details.

The area where the helicopter went down - a stretch of Kandahar along the border with Uruzgan province - is seen as a Taliban stronghold and key transit route. The insurgents regularly attack police checkpoints around the rural villages of the district and plant bombs in the road to catch passing government vehicles.

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a medium-lift helicopter that has served as the U.S. Army's workhorse since the 1980s.

The U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan has relied heavily on utility helicopters such as the Black Hawk to ferry troops, dignitaries and supplies around the mountainous terrain, thus avoiding the threat of ambushes and roadside bombs.

Thursday's crash is the deadliest since a Turkish helicopter crashed into a house near the Afghan capital, Kabul, on March 16, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground, officials said.

In August last year, insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter, killing 30 American troops, mostly elite Navy SEALs, in Afghanistan's central Wardak province.

At least 221 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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