[Mb-civic] ABC Team Stabilized After Iraq Convoy Hit - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

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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