[Mb-civic] ABC Team Stabilized After Iraq Convoy Hit - Washington
Post
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Mon Jan 30 03:42:14 PST 2006
ABC Team Stabilized After Iraq Convoy Hit
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 30, 2006; A01
BAGHDAD, Jan. 29 -- A co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" and an ABC
cameraman suffered serious head wounds Sunday in a roadside bomb attack
in Taji, north of Baghdad. They were stabilized at a military hospital
and were later flown to Germany for further medical care, the network
said in a statement.
Bob Woodruff, 44, who took over the anchor duties for the weeknight
broadcast earlier this month, and cameraman Doug Vogt were embedded with
the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division but were traveling with an Iraqi
unit in an Iraqi vehicle when the explosion occurred, ABC News President
David Westin said in a statement. An Iraqi soldier was also wounded in
the attack, which took place at 12:25 p.m., the U.S. military reported.
ABC News said on its Web site that both Woodruff and Vogt were partially
exposed because they were standing in the vehicle's hatch. They both
suffered head injuries, and Woodruff also suffered wounds to his upper
body, the network said. They were flown to Baghdad's fortified Green
Zone and then to a hospital on a U.S. base in Balad, northwest of the
capital, where both underwent lengthy surgeries that stabilized their
conditions.
"We take this as good news, but the next few days will be critical,"
Westin said. The injured journalists were later flown to a U.S. military
hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
Before the attack, Woodruff and Vogt, part of a four-man ABC team, had
switched from an American Humvee to the Iraqi vehicle. The ABC crew was
riding in the lead vehicle in a U.S.-Iraqi convoy at the time of the
explosion, which was followed by small-arms fire, the network reported.
The journalists were wearing body armor, helmets and ballistic glasses.
According to a U.S. military official who was briefed on the incident
but spoke on the condition of anonymity, the attack came as they rode in
a Soviet-made MT-LB armored personnel carrier, a 12-ton vehicle that can
carry about a dozen soldiers. It is described as "lightly armored" on
the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, which catalogues
the specifications of military equipment. The armor in its turret is
said to be seven to 14 millimeters thick.
"It looks like what got them was standing up in the turret," the
military official said, adding that doing so was less safe but not
unusual. "Another guy inside didn't have a scratch on him."
Woodruff, who anchors "World News Tonight" with Elizabeth Vargas, is an
experienced war correspondent who has reported from the former
Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and was embedded with a Marine reconnaissance
unit during the invasion of Iraq. A Michigan native, he has four children.
Vogt, a Canadian, has 25 years of experience, is a three-time Emmy Award
winner and is now based in Europe, according to a biography posted on a
Web site devoted to photojournalists.
The incident was one of several attacks that killed more than a dozen
people Sunday across Iraq, including at least three in a series of
apparently coordinated bombings targeting churches in the northern city
of Kirkuk. Nearly simultaneous explosions at two churches in Baghdad and
at the Vatican Embassy in the Iraqi capital caused only minor injuries.
In Kirkuk, insurgents detonated a car bomb near the city's Orthodox
Church during a Sunday afternoon Mass, according to Gen. Burhan Tayyib
of the Iraqi police. The explosion killed one civilian and wounded five.
Ten minutes later, a second explosion targeted the Virgin Mary Church
for the Chaldeans, killing two and wounding seven.
Tayyib said the attacks were "a message from the terrorists to create
sectarian strife."
In Baghdad, sectarian tension has mounted recently as near-daily raids
by the predominately Shiite Muslim police force -- which is accused of
carrying out assassinations with impunity and of being controlled by
Shiite militias -- have enraged residents of largely Sunni Arab
neighborhoods.
On Sunday, Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi said police were conducting a
"sectarian cleansing" of the city. He demanded that in the country's
next government, which politicians are in the process of forming,
ministries controlling Iraq's security forces be put beyond the control
of politicians with links to militias.
Appointments to lead the two security-oriented ministries are expected
to be highly contentious. The Interior Ministry is currently led by
Bayan Jabr, whose party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution
in Iraq, controls a feared Shiite militia called the Badr Organization.
The Defense Ministry is led by Sadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni.
Militia involvement in the police force has also inflamed tension in the
southern city of Basra, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered Sunday
outside a British army headquarters to protest the recent detention of
five policemen. The provincial government has threatened to cease
cooperation with the British if the men are not released.
The crowd was led by followers of outspoken cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose
Mahdi Army militia retains strong influence over the local police force.
Also on Sunday, the governor of Baghdad said in an interview that
investigators had collected names and addresses of suspects in the
abduction of American reporter Jill Carroll and the killing of her
translator more than three weeks ago. Gov. Hussein Taha said the
suspects have ties to the Amariyah neighborhood of Baghdad and that an
undisclosed number of arrests had been made. At least one of the men
believed to be involved was carrying a phony police identification card,
he said.
Carroll, 28, is a freelance reporter who was working for the Christian
Science Monitor at the time of her abduction. Her captors released a
videotape threatening to kill her if all female detainees in U.S.
custody were not released. Five women were released from American
facilities last week, though at least four are still being held.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/29/AR2006012900850.html?referrer=email
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