Newspaper editor found slain in Iraq

BAGHDAD – The managing editor of a daily government-run newspaper launched with U.S. funding after the fall of Saddam Hussein was found slain Sunday, the 85th Iraqi journalist to be killed in Iraq since the war began.

The body of Filaih Wadi Mijthab of the daily newspaper Al Sabah was discovered in Baghdad the same day a four-day-old curfew imposed after the bombing of a Shiite Muslim mosque in the city of Samarra was lifted.

Five additional corpses of unidentified men, apparent victims of sectarian murders, also were discovered Sunday.

Mijthab was kidnapped Wednesday by gunmen in several cars who intercepted his vehicle as he drove to work. Iraqi journalists are constant targets of insurgents. Of the 107 journalists killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion of March 2003, at least 85 have been Iraqi, according to statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Fourteen have been from the U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network, which includes Al Sabah and state-run Iraqiya television.

Early today, as many as 36 people were killed in a battle between Shiite militiamen and British forces doing house-to-house searches in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, the Iraqi police and hospital officials said.

The British military could not immediately comment on the reports.

Around the capital Sunday, U.S. troops stepped up efforts against insurgents linked to al-Qaida, part of a new offensive announced a day earlier in conjunction with the arrival of the last of 28,500 extra American troops sent to enforce President Bush’s security plan.

Three U.S. soldiers were reported killed in Iraq. Brief statements said all three died Saturday in bomb blasts, two near Tikrit and one in Kirkuk.