Iraq – +News Crew Struck By IAD+

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two British journalists working for U.S. television network CBS were among four people killed when a car bomb hit a U.S. military patrol in Baghdad on Monday.

American CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was seriously wounded and six U.S. soldiers were also injured, CBS and the U.S. military said in separate statements.

An unnamed U.S. soldier and an Iraqi civilian working with the military were killed along with the network’s London-based cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and soundman James Brolan, 42.

Dozier, 39 and a long-time reporter on Middle East affairs, was operated on in a Baghdad military hospital. Doctors were “cautiously optimistic,” CBS said.

The crew had been filming a report on a joint U.S. and Iraqi army patrol through the Iraqi capital in mid-morning.

“A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device struck the patrol in central Baghdad at approximately 10:30 a.m. (0630 GMT),” the U.S. military said. A spokesman said it was not clear if a suicide attacker had rammed the car into the convoy.

It was one of the deadliest attacks on a U.S. patrol in central Baghdad for some time. Fellow journalists arrived quickly at the scene to see a Humvee armored patrol vehicle in flames and U.S. troops securing the immediate area.

The CBS news team had “embedded” with a unit of the 4th Infantry Division for a brief reporting assignment, colleagues said. It was Memorial Day in the United States, a public holiday dedicated to remembering America’s war dead.

The attack was one of a number of blasts that claimed at least 40 lives, most of them in Baghdad.

DANGEROUS PROFESSION

More than 70 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of 2003, making it by some measures the deadliest conflict for the profession since World War Two. Douglas had worked for CBS News in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rwanda and Bosnia, as well as Iraq, since the early 1990s.

A towering figure with an easy going manner, he was a distinctive and well-liked presence in Baghdad’s small corps of foreign journalists.

Brolan was a freelancer who had worked with CBS in Baghdad and Afghanistan over the past year, CBS said.

“This is a devastating loss for CBS News,” said Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports.

“Kimberly, Paul and James were veterans of war coverage who proved their bravery and dedication every single day. They always volunteered for dangerous assignments and were invaluable in our attempt to report the news to the American public.”