Former hostage Jill Carroll, left, is welcomed back to the United States by her family, from left, twin sister Katie, mother Mary Beth and father Jim after she arrived in Boston following 82 days of captivity in Iraq.

The Associated Press

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BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Sunday that the bodies of two American pilots killed when their Apache helicopter crashed near Baghdad were recovered and the aircraft was probably shot down. Three other U.S. soldiers were reported killed in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

The AH-64D Apache Longbow went down about 5:30 p.m. Saturday during combat operations west of Youssifiyah, about 10 miles southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. command said in a statement.

"The soldiers' remains were recovered following aircraft recovery operations at the crash site" of the helicopter "which went down due to possible hostile fire," the statement said.

Meanwhile, freed hostage Jill Carroll returned to the United States on Sunday.

"I finally feel like I am alive again. I feel so good," Carroll told the Christian Science Monitor. "To be able to step outside anytime, to feel the sun directly on your face — to see the whole sky. These are luxuries that we just don't appreciate every day."

The 28-year-old journalist, held hostage in Iraq for 82 days, arrived at Boston's Logan International Airport three days after her release. She was quickly driven out of the airport in a police-escorted limousine to a private meeting at the newspaper's headquarters with her family. She was greeted by her tearful mother, father and twin sister.

Carroll was freelancing for the Monitor when she was seized Jan. 7 in one of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods, near where a Sunni Arab official had agreed to meet her for an interview that never took place. The gunmen who abducted her killed her Iraqi translator.

Also Sunday, an investigative judge said he will file new criminal charges against Saddam Hussein in the next few days charging him in the deaths and deportation of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s, a government prosecutor said Sunday.

No further details were released on the helicopter crash, but Youssifiyah is located in the "triangle of death," a religiously mixed area notorious for attacks by Sunni extremists against Shiites.

It was the first loss of a U.S. helicopter since three of them crashed in a 10-day period in January, killing a total of 18 American military personnel. At least two of those helicopters were shot down.

The U.S. command also said two of the three slain soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb late Saturday in central Baghdad and the other died from nonhostile related injuries suffered near the northern city of Kirkuk on the same day.

The latest U.S. casualties followed one of the least-deadly months of the Iraq war for U.S. forces. Thirty-one U.S. service members died during March, the lowest monthly death toll for the U.S. military since February 2004. About 400 Iraqis died, many in violence between Shiite and Sunni factions.

Underscoring the problem of sectarian violence and the need for a unity government, the bodies of at least 42 men — handcuffed and shot in the head or chest — were found over the weekend in several neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said Sunday.

Journalist is back in U.S. following 82-day captivity