Iraqi journalists' bodies found

Two Iraqi journalists were found dead south of Baghdad today a day after they were stopped by men wearing police uniforms, the manager of their television station said.

The bodies of Laith al-Dulaimi and Muazaz Ahmed were discovered at midday along a main road near their hometown of Madain, about 12 miles south-east of the capital, said Abdul-Karim al-Mehdawi, general manager of Al-Nahrain TV, a private station.

He quoted witnesses as saying the pair were driving to Madain yesterday when they were stopped on the highway by men wearing police uniforms who took them away.

Their bodies were brought to the morgue in Kut, officials there said.

The latest deaths bring to at least 70 the number of journalists who have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalism. Nearly 73% of them have been Iraqi.

Earlier bombs killed a US soldier and seven Iraqis today as Iraqi politicians haggled over key posts in the new Cabinet, Iraqi and US officials said. Another American died yesterday in northern Iraq, according to a US statement.

Today’s worst attack occurred when a bomb exploded in a car parked near an Iraqi court in central Baghdad, killing five Iraqi civilians and wounding 10, said police Lt. Col. Falah Mohamadawi.

In eastern Baghdad, a car bomb exploded during morning rush hour near a police patrol on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding 12 Iraqis: five policemen and seven civilians, said police Lt. Ahmed Qassim.

Southeast of the capital, a US military convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, damaging one vehicle and killing a US army soldier travelling in it, the military said.

Yesterday, the US command said, another American soldier was killed and one wounded near Tal Afar while US troops were helping Iraqi forces attack a building where insurgents were firing at civilians and soldiers.

Tal Afar is 260 miles north-west of Baghdad and about 95 miles east of the Syrian border. President George Bush had cited Tal Afar as a success story in US and Iraqi efforts to suppress the insurgency.

The two American fatalities raised to at least 2,421 the number of members of the US military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

On Saturday, a chemical weapons expert for a major Islamic extremist group was killed by security forces in Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials said. Ali Wali, a member of Ansar al-Islam, died during a raid on a suspected militant safe house in the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansour, the US command said.

Wali’s body was recovered from the scene by civilians and later identified at a morgue, the officials said. Iraq’s government described him as the top official in charge of training fighters; planning suicide attacks, kidnappings, ambushes; and manufacturing explosives for Ansar al-Islam, a mostly Kurdish insurgent group. In addition to toxins and poisons, Wali also was an expert in the use of artillery, tanks and anti-aircraft weapons, the US command said.

In other attacks in Iraq:

- Militants bombed an oil pipeline late yesterday near Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad. The pipeline carries oil from Dora refinery in Baghdad to Musayyib power station, which was closed by the attack, said police Col. Ahmed Mijwal.

- Suspected insurgents stopped a bus carrying Higher Education Ministry employees to work in western Baghdad, fatally shooting the driver and wounding a policemen who was working on the bus as a guard, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

Insurgents often try to prevent Iraqi citizens from co-operating with their country’s new democratically elected government by attacking government workers and killing men who have been recruited into Iraq’s military and police forces.

- Police found the bodies of seven Iraqi men who had been kidnapped and executed, apparently the latest victim of many sectarian “death squad” killings in Baghdad, police said.

- A roadside bomb exploded near a US convoy on a road between Najaf and Karbala, two of the country’s most sacred cities for religious Shiites. Witnesses reported casualties, but police could not immediately confirm that.

- A parked car bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol exploded in eastern Baghdad, wounding two civilians and a policeman, said police Capt. Mohammed Abdul-Ghani.

New details also emerged about a bomb-making factory hidden in a religious school near a major Sunni Muslim shrine in Baghdad.

Yesterday, the US military reported that one suspected insurgent was killed and one wounded when their bomb making factory exploded in the basement of one of Baghdad’s two more important Sunni shrines.

Today, the US command and Iraqi forces said an investigation had found that one insurgent died and two were wounded in the basement of the partially built al-Qadiriya religious school located next door to the shrine when the roadside bombs they were making exploded.

Years ago, Saddam Hussein’s government began building the school near the tomb of Abdul-Qadir al-Quilani and is visited by thousands of Sunni Muslims from around the region, but the school was left unfinished after the US-led invasion.

Weapons have been found hidden in other mosques in Baghdad since insurgents began fighting US-led forces after the fall of Saddam, but US and Iraqi forces rarely risk offending Iraq’s many religious Muslims by searching such holy sites.