U.S., Iraqis repel attacks on Provincial government headquarters

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers repelled coordinated attacks on the provincial government headquarters in the western city of Ramadi Tuesday afternoon, killing seven insurgents, the military said Wednesday.

Five insurgents — whose assault included mortar, small-arms and machine-gun fire — were killed by a strike from a Marine Harrier jet as they gathered in a nearby cemetery, according to a statement from Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a Marine spokesman. Two other fighters died in a firefight after insurgents used a rocket-propelled grenade to attack a military convoy entering the city's main government compound.

No U.S. or Iraqi forces were wounded in the clashes, the statement said.

During the fighting, Mahmoud Zaal 30, a cameraman for the Baghdad TV network, was killed by more than 20 bullets to the head, abdomen and legs, according to Mohammed Dulaimi, a doctor at the Ramadi hospital.

Baghdad TV is owned by the country's dominant Sunni Arab political organization, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which recently re-entered politics after boycotting elections held a year ago. Islamic Party official Baha Aldin Naqshabandi said Marines mistook Zaal, who was sent to Ramadi to report on the condition of local residents, for a combatant while he was gathering footage in the city's main market.

In recent months Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, has seen some of the heaviest fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Sunni-led insurgents.

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Raids protested: In the predominately Shiite southern city of Basra, several hundred protesters took to the streets to denounce raids conducted a day earlier by British forces in which at least a dozen people were detained, most of them members of the city's police force. Police in Basra and across southern Iraq have increasingly come under the control of sectarian militias blamed for acts of political violence.

Police targeted: At least two people, including a police officer, were wounded when a motorcycle bomb aimed at an Iraqi police patrol exploded in central Baghdad, police said.

U.S. troops killed: The U.S. military said today that a soldier was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb blast south of Baghdad on Wednesday. The soldiers belonged to the Multi-National Division Baghdad, the military said. The military also said a U.S. Marine was killed by small-arms fire Tuesday in Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad. That raised the number of U.S. military personnel killed in the Iraq war to at least 2,237, according to an Associated Press count.

Jump to freedom: An Iraqi television personality said she escaped kidnapping Tuesday by jumping from her second-floor balcony in Baghdad. Nagham Abdul-Zahra suffered multiple fractures but her husband was freed unharmed.

Cleric shot: A prominent Sunni Arab cleric, Karim Jassim Mohammed, 39, was shot to death Wednesday by police at a checkpoint heading into the northern city of Samarra, said police Capt. Laith Mohammed. A policeman also was gunned down in Baghdad's Sadr City, police said.

Audit shows irregularities: A U.S. government audit of its spending in Iraq published Tuesday revealed irregularities and improprieties, including tens of millions of dollars in cash deposited and withdrawn from a vault without any tracking documentation and up to $60,000 in reconstruction funds gambled away by a service member traveling in the Philippines. U.S. officials "did not effectively manage" more than 2,000 contracts worth $88 million, according to the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. In Hilla, the document said, the United States paid $108,140 for renovations that were never made to an Olympic-size swimming pool and signed off on repairs to an elevator in the city's hospital that later crashed to the ground, killing three.

Women to be freed: A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed Wednesday statements by Iraq Justice Ministry officials who said five women detainees are scheduled to be released today. The kidnappers of American journalist Jill Carroll had threatened to kill her by last Friday unless all female prisoners were freed. The deadline passed with no word on her fate.

Germans kidnapped: Two German engineers were seized two days after they arrived in Iraq by kidnappers who entered their compound by pretending to be soldiers, police said Wednesday. The two men identified by a German newspaper as Thomas Nitzschke and Rene Braeunlich, work for an engineering firm based in Leipzig and were on assignment at a government-owned detergent plant in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. More than 240 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since 2003.

Compiled from The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor and Reuters.