American soldier critical after being shot in head

AN American soldier was shot in the head as he waited in line to buy a soft drink at Baghdad University yesterday, while American forces killed two insurgents who charged an army post in a truck, firing a rocket-propelled grenade.

The soldier was shot at close range at about midday, witnesses said.

He was evacuated to a military hospital, where he was in a critical condition, said Army Major William Thurmond, a US military spokesman.

The violence in the capital came as the military declared the end of its latest major sweep through central Iraq hunting for Iraqis who have carried out daily attacks on American forces.

In the seven-day Operation Sidewinder, US forces detained 282 people and confiscated hundreds of weapons and ammunition, the military said but none of the Iraq's top fugitives were apprehended.

Thirty Iraqis were killed in Sidewinder operations, and there were no coalition deaths, the military said.

Officials have blamed loyalists to ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for the often deadly ambushes and shootings over the past weeks.

In Baghdad, the two insurgents were killed on Saturday night as they charged US troops in a white pickup truck and fired a rocket-propelled grenade.

In other attacks, insurgents fired a grenade early yesterday into a small US army compound in the town of Abu Sada al-Sagra, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, lightly injuring one soldier.

The wounded soldier, Pfc Seth Janisse, from Indian River, Michigan, suffered minor shrapnel wounds.

"We saw the muzzle flash where the RPG had come from and we returned fire, but I don't know if we got him," Janisse said. On Saturday, a gunman shot and killed a young British journalist outside Iraq's Natural History Museum.

Richard Wild, a 24-year-old freelance videographer, was standing in a crowd in the midday sun when he was killed by a single, small-calibre bullet fired into his head at close range, said Michael Burke, an independent British television TV producer in Baghdad.

Wild arrived in the country two weeks ago aiming to be a war correspondent, his co-workers said yesterday.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair set himself on a collision course with the BBC yesterday by warning the corporation that its allegation that the dossier on Iraq's weapons had been "sexed up" was "about as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be."

The prime minister's hardline stance came as BBC director general Greg Dyke prepared to meet the corporation's board of governors to crystallise the BBC case ahead of the publication of the Foreign Affairs Committee report today.

Both Downing Street and the BBC were standing firm over their interpretation of the Radio 4 Today programme story by defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan on May 29, which alleged that intelligence officials were unhappy about the September 2002 dossier.

In an interview with yesterday's Observer, the prime minister said: "the idea that I, or anyone else in my position frankly, would start altering intelligence evidence, or saying to the intelligence services I am going to insert this, is absurd.

"There couldn't be a more serious charge, that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified.

"I take it as about as serious an attack on my integrity there could possibly be." A BBC spokesperson said: "we have never accused the prime minister of lying."