Television crew dies in Baghdad blast
A cameraman and a soundman for the CBS television network in the United States have been killed and a correspondent seriously injured after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
The attack on Monday was one of eight bombings that left at least 33 people dead and dozens wounded during the day, Iraqi police said. It was the worst wave of violence to hit Baghdad in days.
CBS said that veteran cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and soundman James Brolan, 42, were killed. Correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, was seriously injured.
The three were embedded with the US army and were reporting on patrol with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, in Baghdad when their convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device, CBS said.
Earlier in the day a wave of car and roadside bombs swept through Baghdad and just north of the capital, leaving more than two dozen people dead, including one explosion that killed 10 people on a bus.
Minivan bomb
The explosions began just after dawn on Monday, with one roadside bomb killing 10 people and injuring another 12 who worked for an Iranian organisation opposed to the government in Iran.
Police said another bomb planted in a parked minivan killed at least seven and injured at least 20 when it exploded at the entrance to an open-air market selling second-hand clothes in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah.
Falah al-Mohammedawi, police Lieutenant Colonel, said that a parked car bomb also exploded near Ibin al-Haitham college in Azamiyah, also in northern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding at least five others, including four Iraqi soldiers,
In Baghdad’s Tahariyat Square, a parked car bomb targeting an American convoy killed one civilian and injured nine. It was not known if there were any US casualties, but at least one Humvee was seen on fire.
Police said that a second bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol near the square killed one and wounded 10, including four police.
Other attacks
In other attacks, a roadside bomb killed two police officers and wounded three others in downtown Baghdad’s Karradah district, while one man was killed and six were injured when a bomb hidden in a minivan used as a bus exploded.
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Monday’s most serious attack targeted a public bus near Khalis, 80km north of Baghdad in Diyala province, an area notorious for such attacks.
Provincial police said that all the dead were workers at the Ashraf base of the Mujahedeen Khalk, or MEK, which opposes Iran’s government.
In other violence, gun men killed two police officers when they attacked a convoy in western Baghdad.
Another group seriously wounded a police colonel in nearby Ghazaliyah. Two other police officers, identified as former Baathists, were killed in Amarah, 290km southeast of Baghdad.