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| Iraq |
| Car booms at Kurd checkpoint |
| 2003-03-22 |
| At least one person was killed in an explosion Saturday at a checkpoint near the camp of the al-Qaida-linked militant group Ansar al-Islam, whose northern-Iraqi base reportedly was attacked overnight by U.S. cruise missiles. The shattered remains of a car and at least one body were found, but few details were available about what caused the explosion or how many people were involved. It was not clear if there was a surviving witness at the checkpoint. The unidentified body was put in the back of a taxi and taken to the city of Sulaymaniah. "Yo! Taxi! To the morgue, and make it snappy!" There was an unconfirmed report that a vehicle driving back from Khurmal had reached the checkpoint when a taxi pulled alongside and exploded. FOLLOWUP: An apparent car bomb killed at least five people, including a Western journalist, on Saturday at a checkpoint near a camp of a militant group linked to al-Qaida. The checkpoint blast in northern Iraq injured eight people, who were taken to hospitals. Journalists had gone to the checkpoint to interview refugees after the area — a base for the al-Qaida-linked militant group Ansar al-Islam — came under attack overnight by U.S. cruise missiles. One of the cars coming out with the refugees exploded. Killed at the checkpoint were a journalist, another civilian and three Kurdish soldiers. Their names were not made public. Vicious little bastards, aren't they? More followup: An Australian cameraman on assignment for the ABC in northern Iraq has been killed by a car bomb. Freelance cameraman Paul Moran, 39, and ABC correspondent Eric Campbell had gone to the northern town of Sayed Sadiq where there had been some fighting between Kurds and Iraqi militants. Mr Campbell says Mr Moran had gone ahead of him to do some filming. Mr Moran was filming final shots for their story, when a taxi sped up alongside him and exploded. "Paul was getting one last shot of some peshmergas who were running towards the base and he walked about 50 metres in front of me to get this shot, and a taxi just screamed up beside him and exploded and, we were thrown back, and Paul was dead," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |