Baghdad, Iraq – U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers repelled coordinated attacks on the provincial government headquarters in the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday afternoon, killing seven insurgents, the military said Wednesday.
Five insurgents – whose assault included mortar, small-arms and machine-gun fire – were killed by a strike from a Marine Harrier jet as they gathered in a nearby cemetery, according to a statement from Capt. Jeffrey Pool, a Marine spokesman in the city.
Two other fighters died in a firefight after insurgents used a rocket-propelled grenade to attack a military convoy entering the city’s main government compound.
No U.S. or Iraqi forces were wounded in the clashes, the statement said.
During the fighting, Mahmoud Zaal 30, a cameraman for the Baghdad TV network, was killed by more than 20 bullets to the head, abdomen and legs, according to Mohammed Dulaimi, a doctor at the Ramadi hospital.
Baghdad TV is owned by the country’s dominant Sunni Arab political organization, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which recently re-entered politics after boycotting elections held a year ago.
Islamic Party official Baha Aldin Naqshabandi said Marines mistook Mahmoud, who was sent to Ramadi to report on the condition of local residents amid recent clashes, for a combatant while he was gathering footage in the city’s main market.
Tension also mounted Wednesday in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Basra.
Several hundred protesters took to the streets to denounce raids conducted Tuesday by British forces, in which at least a dozen people were detained, most of them members of the city’s police force.
