U.S. soldiers in Iraq disturbed by the mounting Iraqi resistance

BAGHDAD, July 6 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - An American soldier has been shot point-blank Sunday, July 6, at Baghdad university as students were gathering for lunch, the BBC News Online said.

According to eyewitnesses two soldiers were chatting with students at a university faculty when a man walked up behind them, drew a pistol and shot one of the American soldiers in the head at close range and took to his heels, the British broadcaster added. 

The BBC's correspondent said that U.S. troops cleared the area and loaded their wounded comrade into a vehicle to take to a field hospital.

IslamOnline.net correspondent said that U.S. troops locked thousands of Iraqi students inside the campus and besieged the university.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted a U.S. military spokeswoman as saying that the soldier was critically wounded not dead.

"Today at about 12:30 p.m. (0830 GMT) a soldier was shot while guarding Baghdad University," in the centre of the capital, Specialist Nicole Thompson told AFP.

The soldier was evacuated to an unspecified hospital, she said, without providing further details.

The incident comes as a British journalist was shot dead by unknown persons in Baghdad Saturday, July 5, in the first killing of a reporter in Iraq since the United States declared the end of its war here at the beginning of May 2003.

"I understand he was a freelance cameraman formerly with ITN," deputy head of the British mission in Iraq, Jon Wilks, told AFP.

"We understand it happened around noon... near the college of arts in Azamiyah,"   in the northwest of the capital, he said.

The victim's identity was not immediately released.

The mission said it was waiting for the man's family to be contacted and declined to give any further information.

The journalist did occasional work for ITN, but was not a member of its staff, said a spokeswoman in London for ITN, which produces newscasts for Britain's three terrestrial commercial television channels.

‘Remote Area’

The death was the 14th of a journalist in Iraq since the United States invaded the country on March 20. Another two journalists are still listed as missing, although widely thought to have been killed during the war, according to an AFP account.

On April 8, U.S. missiles hit the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera television early Tuesday, April 8, killing and wounding two staff in what the Qatar-based Arabic news network charged was a deliberate strike.

Six British soldiers were killed and eight others injured June 24 in two separate incidents in southern Iraq, in the first major attack on British soldiers since the fall of the Iraqi capital on April 9.

Meanwhile, Al-jazeera said Sunday that its team in the Iraqi town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, was arrested by U.S. troops to prevent them from covering Saturday's police station blast in the town, which killed 7 Iraqi policemen and wounded 15 others.

It added that the team was then released, but dropped in a remote area.