The Week In Iraq (So Far)

Last Throes:

A roadside bomb blast killed 14 Marines and a civilian interpreter Wednesday as they rode in a vehicle near Haditha, Iraq, U.S. military officials said.

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On Monday, six Marine sniper team members were killed in a firefight near the same city and a Marine was killed in nearby Hit. Twenty-one Marines have been killed in the region in three days. The number of U.S. troops killed in the Iraq war stands at 1,820, according to U.S. military reports.

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U.S. freelance journalist Steven Vincent was found shot to death in the southern Iraqi city of Basra early Wednesday, officials said.

A Basra police official said Vincent and his female interpreter, Nuriya Tiays, had been abducted about 12:30 a.m. (4:30 p.m. Tuesday) in the Ashar area of central Basra.

Vincent's body was found about a 10-minute drive from the place where he and Tiays were kidnapped, the official said. Tiays was shot in the chest and was being treated in a hospital.

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Two Iraqi police officers were assassinated within 12 hours of each other in Baghdad, police said Wednesday.

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A suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military convoy Tuesday as it traveled through an underpass beneath al-Tahrir Square in Baghdad, wounding 29 people, Iraqi police said. Fifteen vehicles were destroyed.

In Baquba, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, police said gunmen killed a Diyala province Health Ministry official and his driver Tuesday near Diyala Medical College.

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Also in Baquba, a bomb attack on a police convoy killed a police officer and a child Tuesday, police said. Seven police and a civilian were wounded.

In good news:

Iraqi police have captured a top commander of Ansar al-Sunna, a terrorist group blamed for last year's suicide bombing at a U.S. military mess hall in Mosul that killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. troops.