Baghdad, Iraq – On a day of soaring violence in Baghdad, police said more than 30 people were killed in bombings and shootings Monday in one of the worst days of bloodshed in the capital for weeks.
Two Britons working as members of a CBS television crew were killed and an American correspondent for the network was critically injured when a military patrol they were accompanying was hit by a roadside bomb.
An American soldier and an Iraqi interpreter also were killed in the attack on a joint U.S. and Iraqi patrol, and six other soldiers were wounded, a statement by the American military command said. CBS News said the two crewmen and journalist were preparing a Memorial Day story on American troops and had left the Humvee in which they were traveling when the attack occurred about 10.30 a.m. in a middle- class neighborhood in eastern Baghdad.
CBS News named the two dead network employees as Paul Douglas, 48, a cameraman, and James Brolan, 42, a soundman, and said that correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, who has worked long periods in CBS’s Baghdad bureau in the past three years, suffered serious injuries and underwent emergency surgery at a military hospital in Baghdad. The statement said that Dozier was in critical condition but that doctors were “cautiously optimistic about her progress.”
Later in the day, Dozier was airlifted by a Black Hawk helicopter to the main American airbase in Iraq at Balad, 50 miles north of the capital, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy said. The spokesman did not say whether Dozier would undergo further treatment at the Balad military hospital.
Iraqi police said the attack that killed the CBS crewmen was only one of a sequence of at least eight bombings that, together with a series of drive-by shootings, killed at least 33 people and wounded dozens of others, a fresh upsurge in violence that has brought hundreds of deaths in the capital in recent weeks.
The police said 12 Iraqis died and 25 were wounded in a noontime car bombing outside the Abu Hanifa mosque in Adhamiya, a Sunni stronghold in north Baghdad. They said at least seven others died and 20 were wounded when a bomb planted in a parked minivan exploded at the entrance to an open-air clothes market in Khadhimiya, a mainly Shiite area across the Tigris river from Adhamiya.
At least 25 other people were killed in bombing and shooting attacks elsewhere in the country, including 10 Iraqis working at a camp for members of an exiled Iranian communist group who died shortly after dawn when a roadside bomb hit their minivan near Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Two British soldiers were killed Sunday night when an armored Land Rover hit a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra. The British deaths brought to nine the number of British troops killed in Iraq this month, one of Britain’s highest monthly tolls of the war.
The deaths of the two CBS staffers raised to more than 70 the number of journalists killed in Iraq in the 38 months since the American-led invasion in March 2003, including at least 47 Iraqis.
Monday’s attack marked the second time this year that a U.S. television network crew embedded with American troops has been hit by a roadside bomb. On Jan. 29, the co-anchor of ABC News’ “World News Tonight,” Bob Woodruff, and a cameraman, Douglas Vogt, were seriously injured while accompanying a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol. ABC has said that Woodruff is still recovering from serious head and neck injuries, and Vogt has returned to his home in France to convalesce.
“This is a devastating loss for CBS News,” Sean McManus, the president of CBS News, said in a statement on Monday’s bombing that was issued in New York.
“Kimberly, Paul and James were veterans of war coverage who proved their bravery and dedication every day. They always volunteered for dangerous assignments and were invaluable in our attempt to report the news to the American public.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, issued a statement condemning the attack.
Khalid W. Hassan contributed to this report.