Writer shot dead in police car snatch

BAGHDAD - An American journalist who wrote about police hit squads has been found shot dead near Basra after being abducted at gunpoint by five gunmen in a police car.

Police said freelance writer Steven Vincent had been shot in the head and multiple times in his body after he and his Iraqi translator were snatched hours earlier as they left a currency exchange shop.

The translator, Nour Weidi, was seriously wounded. Vincent's body was dumped on the side of a highway south of Basra.

Police said Vincent, a blogger from New York, had been staying in Basra for several months working on a book.

In an article published on Tuesday in the New York Times, Vincent wrote that Basra's police force had been heavily infiltrated by members of Shiite political groups, including those loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Vincent quoted an unidentified Iraqi police lieutenant as saying that some police were behind many of the assassinations of former Baath Party members that have taken place in Basra.

"He told me that there is even a sort of "death car": a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment," he wrote.

Vincent was also critical of the British military, which is responsible for security in Basra, for turning a blind eye to abuses of power by Shiite extremists in the city.

Earlier the United States Marines confirmed that seven Marines were killed yesterday, pushing the number of US troops to have died since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003 to above 1800.

One of Iraq's most violent Islamic militant groups, Army of Ansar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility for the deaths in Anbar.

In the past month, nearly 60 US troops have died, including five who were killed in two roadside bomb attacks in Baghdad at the weekend.

- REUTERS