Wave of violence leaves 40 dead in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Two CBS News crew members and an American soldier were killed Monday during a wave of car bombings and shootings in Iraq that also killed more than three dozen other people.

Network correspondent Kimberly Dozier was seriously wounded and underwent emergency surgery.

As Parliament discussed the nation’s disintegrating security, lawmakers pressed for the appointment of defense and interior ministers – seen as a necessary step for Iraqi forces to assume more control so U.S.-led troops can begin withdrawing.

At least eight bombings rocked the capital Monday in the worst wave of violence in days. A car bomb exploded as a U.S. convoy patrolled in central Baghdad, killing veteran CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, 48; sound man James Brolan, 42; and an American soldier, U.S. officials said.

Dozier, 39, an American, was in critical condition at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad, said Kelli Edwards, a CBS News spokeswoman. By early today, Dozier was undergoing a second surgery for injuries suffered in the bombing, Edwards said.

On Monday, doctors had said they were cautiously optimistic about her prognosis.

The CBS crew was on patrol with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, when the bomb exploded. The U.S. military said an Iraqi interpreter also was killed and six American soldiers were injured.

There were conflicting reports on whether the car was moving or parked when the bomb was detonated.

Dozens of journalists have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Before Monday’s attack killed the two Britons, the Committee to Protect Journalists had put the number killed at 69. Of those, nearly three-quarters were Iraqis, the New York-based group has said.

“These brave journalists risked their lives to tell the world the story of a courageous people and a proud nation,” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad said. “That story must and will be told.”

Another group, Reporters Without Borders, said it was deeply saddened by the CBS crew deaths.

“The security situation is becoming more and more alarming for the press in Iraq,” the group said.

At least 37 other people were killed Monday nationwide, most of them in Baghdad.

The attacks began just after dawn, with one roadside bomb killing 10 people and injuring 12 others who worked for an Iranian organization opposed to the Tehran regime, police said.

That bombing targeted a public bus near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala province, an area notorious for such attacks, provincial police said.

All the dead were workers at the Ashraf base of the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK. The group, made up of Iranian dissidents living in Iraq, said the dead were Iraqi workers heading to their camp.

A bomb in a car parked near Baghdad’s main Sunni Abu Hanifa mosque killed at least nine Iraqi civilians and wounded 25, said Saif al-Janabi, director of Noaman Hospital. It exploded at noon in north Baghdad’s Azamiyah neighborhood and destroyed the vehicle.

A bomb planted in a parked minivan killed at least seven people and wounded at least 20 others at the entrance to an open-air market selling secondhand clothes in the north Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah.

A bomb in a parked car exploded near Ibn al-Haitham college in Azamiyah, killing two civilians and wounding at least five people, including four Iraqi soldiers, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

Iraq’s Parliament debated the deteriorating security situation in the capital and some outlying provinces. But it did not set up a commission to address the problem because of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s inability to appoint ministers of defense and interior – two posts that control the various security forces.

More than a week after al-Maliki’s unity government took office, Iraq’s ethnic, sectarian and secular parties are struggling to agree on those ministers.

“The deteriorating security situation is due to the fact that the interior and defense ministries are still unfilled posts,” Shiite legislator Baha al-Araji said.

Shiites dominate the Interior Ministry, which controls the police forces, and have been promised a Shiite minister, while Sunni Arabs are to get the defense minister, overseeing the army.

It is hoped the balance will enable al-Maliki to move ahead with a plan for Iraqis to take on all security duties during the next 18 months.