18 die in fierce Baghdad fighting

Bombings and shootings across Iraq have left 18 people dead, including a US Marine and a cameraman killed in fierce fighting between American forces and guerrillas armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades in a town west of Baghdad.

In the centre of the capital today, a bomb exploded on a street as a convoy of sports utility vehicles passed, wounding five Iraqis, US Army Lt. Col. Peter Jones said.

It was not clear who was in the cars. US troops sealed off the area after the blast.

In the town of Fallujah, about 35 miles west of Baghdad, seven marines were also wounded, beside the one killed, in clashes yesterday, a US spokesman in Baghdad said.

The marines and guerrillas fought for hours in the alleyways of the city, which has resisted US efforts to pacify it since the ousting 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.”

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

“He died of gunshot wounds while covering a firefight in Fallujah. We are trying to confirm all the details surrounding his death and have asked the US 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 US 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 centre of the city until about midnight. The roads were largely deserted as people stayed indoors.

This week, US Marines took over authority in Fallujah and surrounding areas from the US army.

The city on the banks of the Euphrates River sits 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 US military.

Earlier yesterday, four members of the US-trained Iraqi Civil Defence Corps, or ICDC, also were killed while raiding a hideout near Tikrit with US soldiers, the American military said.

Three suspected rebels also died. Twenty-one suspected guerrillas 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.

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

Also yesterday, Time magazine said Omar Hashim Kamal, an Iraqi translator who worked in its Baghdad bureau, died of wounds sustained on Wednesday.

Kamal was shot by unidentified assailants.

Earlier this month, an Iraqi freelance translator working for the Voice of America was shot to death along with his mother and young daughter.

The killings appear to be part of a campaign by insurgents to target or intimidate Iraqis working with foreign companies and the US-led coalition that is governing Iraq.