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View Full Version : Violence across Iraq leaves 18 dead, including a U.S. marine and a cameraman



thedrifter
03-27-04, 06:36 PM
Last update: March 27, 2004 at 5:45 AM

Violence across Iraq leaves 18 dead, including a U.S. marine and a cameraman

Daniel Cooney, Associated Press
March 27, 2004IRAQ28

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombings and shootings across Iraq have left 18 people dead, including a Marine and an ABC cameraman killed in fierce fighting between American forces and guerrillas armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

In the center of the capital Saturday, a bomb exploded on a street as a convoy of sport utility vehicles passed, wounding five Iraqis, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Peter Jones said. It was not clear who was in the cars. U.S. troops sealed off the area after the blast.

In the city of Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, seven Marines were wounded, besides the one killed, in clashes Friday, a U.S. spokesman in Baghdad said. Footage from Associated Press Television News showed American troops carrying a comrade in a stretcher shortly after an explosion during combat.

The Marines and guerrillas fought for hours in the alleys of the city, which has resisted American efforts to pacify it since the ouster of Saddam Hussein a year ago.

The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force issued a statement saying it was ``conducting offensive operations ... to foster a secure and stable environment for the people.'' It went on to say that ``some have chosen to fight. Having elected their fate, they are being engaged and destroyed.''

An AP photographer saw two rebels in civilian clothes firing a mortar and another preparing to fire a rocket-propelled grenade.

A freelance cameraman for ABC television, Burhan Mohammed Mazhour, 34, was shot in the head and killed while filming the clashes. It was unclear who killed him.

``We are trying to confirm all the details surrounding his death and have asked the U.S. military for an investigation,'' ABC News President David Westin said in a statement from New York.

Witnesses said Mazhour and other journalists were taking cover behind a wall, with the Marines in front and the insurgents behind. After rebels fired a barrage of grenades at the U.S. troops, Mazhour peered around the wall and a bullet struck him in the forehead almost instantly.

Four other Iraqis were killed and six wounded in the fighting, said a doctor at Fallujah hospital, Diyaa al-Jumailee. Witnesses said the dead included a shop owner, a customer and two bystanders.

Local resident Salim Saad said occasional explosions and gunfire were heard from the center of the city until about midnight. The roads were largely deserted as people stayed indoors.

This week, Marines took over authority in Fallujah and surrounding areas from the Army. The city on the banks of the Euphrates River is in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where support for Saddam was strong and rebel attacks on American forces are frequent.

In recent months, American troops have rarely ventured into downtown Fallujah, one of the most dangerous areas in Iraq for the U.S. military.

Earlier Friday, four members of the U.S.-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or ICDC, also were killed while raiding a hideout near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit with U.S. soldiers, the American military said. Three suspected rebels also died and 21 were captured in the raid.

In the town of Shwan, near the northern city of Kirkuk, four people en route to a wedding died when the vehicles they were riding in struck an anti-tank mine. The explosion injured 12 other people, police said Friday.

Gunmen shot and killed an Iraqi police officer late Friday while he was walking home in Kirkuk, Fhadila Rashid, an official at the city's morgue, said Saturday.

Also Friday, Time magazine said Omar Hashim Kamal, an Iraqi translator who worked in its Baghdad bureau, died of wounds sustained Wednesday. Kamal was shot by unidentified assailants.

In the northern city of Irbil, a Kurdish member of the Governing Council, Jalal Talabani, told a conference that building a new country requires reconciliation among divided ethnic, religious and political groups.

``National reconciliation is a prerequisite for building the new Iraq,'' Talabani said. ``Slogans such as 'We are all Iraqis and We're all brothers' aren't enough.''

A U.N. electoral team, which will look at technical aspects of selecting Iraq's interim government in the lead-up to the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, arrived in Baghdad on Friday. The team, which includes security personnel, is led by Carina Perelli, a U.N. expert on Iraq, spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York. A second U.N. delegation, headed by top envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected in early April.

The team is expected to hold informal meetings with members of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council on Saturday, council member Mahmoud Othman said.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1762/4688957.html


Ellie