Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi journalist for a US-funded Arabic television station and his young son in one of a number of attacks across the country that left at least nine people dead. The US military also reported the death of two more US soldiers.
Abdel Hussein Khazaal, a correspondent for the Al-Hurra pan-Arab television station was shot dead as he left his home in the southern city of Basra, a provincial government official said, accordingto AFP. Khazaal's four year-old son was also killed and his driver injured.
Four gunmen were waiting in a car outside the home of Khazaal, who also worked for the governor's press service and was a member of the Shiite political party Dawa, the official said.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb hit a police convoy near the northern town of Samarra, killing four and injuring two others, police said.
Two Iraqi soldiers and an armed man were killed overnight during a raid on the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad. A civilian was killed in a mortar attack on a police station at Baiji, 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.
The US army said its troops killed an "insurgent" near Balad, north of the capital, as he planted a roadside bomb late Tuesday.
The US military on Wednesday also declared that one soldier was shot dead Tuesday and that another soldier was killed by small arms fire in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the oil ministry's representative to the interior ministry, Colonel Riad Allawi, was kidnapped in southern Baghdad, officials said.
