10/16/2004 3:30:00 PM GMT
A car bomb exploded at a U.S. patrol near western Iraqi town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border, killing four Iraqis and four U.S. troops and injuring 30 on Saturday, a hospital official said.
The doctor of Ramadi hospital said that many explosions were heard in the morning at the time of the attack. There was no word on who was responsible for the blasts.
Lt. Col. Chris Woodbridge, commander of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment confirmed that four U.S. troops have been killed and said that an explosive-laden car targeted the U.S. patrol.
The U.S. military said that another bomb exploded in the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles north of Baghdad, killing a U.S. Marine assigned to Task Force Olympia.
The military also said Saturday that another U.S. soldier from the Task Force Olympia died of wounds sustained in a car bomb explosion in Iraq's northern city of Mosul. It added that the military convoy was attacked in an eastern area of Mosul on Friday afternoon.
Also Saturday, a member of the Turkoman Front political group was killed in northern Iraq while he driving his children to school, police said.
Rebels opened fire on the car of politician Ghafour Abu Bakr, killing him and slightly wounding his two children, Col. Burhan Taha said, adding that the four rebels then pushed the children out and stole the car.
In Mosul, an Iraqi press photographer working for a European agency was shot dead outside his home, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.
Karam Hussein, who worked for the European Press Agency, was killed by four men who fled after shooting him, RSF said.
Last Thursday, a female reporter who worked for the Kurdish television company Al-Hurriya, Dina Mohammed Hassan, was also killed in Baghdad.
The latest deaths bring the total number of journalists and other media workers killed in Iraq since the start of the U.S. invasion to 44.