2 Journalists Among 16 Killed In Clash In Iraq

BAGHDAD, July 12 — Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias left at least 16 people dead on Thursday, including two Reuters journalists who had come to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

There were conflicting reports of how the two Reuters staffers, both of them Iraqis, were killed. Eyewitnesses said they died when troops on an American helicopter shot into an area where the two had just gotten out of their car, according to a photographer who arrived at the scene shortly after their bodies were taken away.

The two Reuters employees were a photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

When we reached the spot where Namir was killed, the people told us that there had been an air bombing an hour earlier and that two journalists had been killed, said Ahmad Sahib, a cameraman for Agence France-Presse, who had been traveling in a car several blocks behind Mr. Noor-Eldeen and was in touch with him by cellphone until he was killed.

They had arrived, got out of the car and started taking pictures and people gathered, Mr. Sahib said. It looked like the American helicopters were firing against any gathering in the area because when I got out of my car and started taking pictures, people gathered and an American helicopter fired a few rounds, but they hit the houses nearby and we ran for cover.

The American military said they did not have a report yet and could not comment, but confirmed that military operations were going on in the area on Thursday.

Meanwhile, officials at the Interior Ministry and at a Baghdad bank drastically revised their account of a large robbery at the Dar Es Salaam bank on Wednesday, saying that that there had been confusion about how much of the stolen money was Iraqi dinars and how much was dollars. The robbers made off with 282 million Iraqi dinars, valued at about $225,000, and $366,000 in American dollars, making it a far smaller operation than it had appeared to be Wednesday, when the Iraqi police reported that $282 million had been stolen.

In Baghdad, violence racked the southern neighborhood of Saydiya, where the police picked up 17 bodies of the 28 bodies found in the capital on Thursday. The neighborhood has become a battleground over the last several months, with Sunni Arab extremists controlling many of its streets and killing people who refuse to help them.

Shiite Mahdi Army militiamen allied with to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr have been attacking the area as well, residents said. They said they would sometimes arrive home after work and be unable to approach their front doors because of open gunfights in the streets.

A suicide bomber attacked a wedding in Tal Afar, a town 30 miles north of Mosul killing four people and wounding six, according to Brig. Gen. Mohamed Wakaa of the Mosul police. The groom was an Iraqi policeman. A car bomb aimed at a police patrol in central Mosul killed one policeman and wounded eight, General Wakaa said.

In central Iraq, gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint on the road between Samarra and Al Door, killing four policemen and two Iraqi soldiers.

In Diwaniyah in southern Iraq, American helicopters fired on six men burying a roadside bomb, killing five of them, said Maj. Marc Young, a spokesman for the Multi-National Forces. A hospital worker in the city said the five men were connected to the movement allied with Mr. Sadr. Later in the day, Mr. Sadrs supporters walked through the streets mourning the death of their colleagues, chanting anti-American slogans and promising revenge, d witnesses who watched the procession said.

An American soldier was killed Thursday east of Baghdad while conducting combat operations, the United States military said in a statement.

The two Reuters journalist who died Thursday morning had been reporting a story on weightlifting early in the day, and then heard that something was happening in the Ameen neighborhood and drove there to learn more about it, according to an official for the news organization who spoke on background.

According to a Reuters report after the incident, some people at the scene said that American troops fired into the area from a helicopter, and a police report stated that the American bombardment killed the two journalists and nine other people. Mr. Noor-Eldeen, who was single, was originally from Mosul and first worked for Reuters there, moving on to Baghdad after receiving threats. Mr. Chmagh had worked for Reuters since before the invasion in 2003 and had four children. He also supported his sisters family after her husband was killed by insurgents.

Noor-Eldeen and Chmaghs outstanding contribution to reporting on the unfolding events in Iraq has been vital, said the chief executive of Reuters, Tom Glocer, in a statement.

They stand alongside other colleagues in Reuters who have died doing a job that they believe in. Six Reuters employees have been killed in Iraq since American-led forces invaded the country in 2003.

Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher and Ahmad Fadam from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Diwaniyah, Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra and Diyala.

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