One of the Iraqis wounded in the Fallujah raid (AFP)

BAGHDAD, March 27 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Sixteen Iraqis were killed and up to 30 others wounded Friday, March 26, in two raids by the U.S. occupation forces.

Seven Iraqis were killed and four security personnel injured in an American sweep into Tikrit, some 175 kilometers (110 miles) north of Baghdad , Aljazeera channel reported.

During a U.S. incursion into Fallujah, 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad , nine Iraqis, including a two-year-old child and an Iraqi cameraman working for ABC News, and a U.S. Marine were killed.

The cameraman was killed by a bullet to the forehead when U.S. troops fired in the direction of journalists, witnesses told Reuters.

An Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent confirmed that the cameraman was standing among a group of journalists covering clashes between occupation troops and Iraqi fighters, when the U.S. soldiers fired in their direction.

Iraqi resistance fighters with rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and mortars reportedly put up fierce resistance to the U.S. occupation forces.

This came a day after the Committee to Protect Journalists asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to investigate the deaths of journalists in Iraq .

Twenty-three media workers have died since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion in March, 2003.

At least 30 Iraqis were also wounded in the American incursion.

“It was a bloody day in Falluja," doctor Mohammad Daham told Reuters Television.

“We have been receiving casualties in great numbers.”

The television footage showed a boy wounded in the head screaming in pain as doctors bandaged him.

On Thursday, March 25, four Iraqi civilians, including a toddler, were killed and four children wounded in a U.S. offensive into the village of Gazwan , west of Baghdad .

The dead marine raised to 285 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in resistance operations since President George W. Bush declared an end of major hostilities in Iraq on May 1, according to an AFP count.

In Baghdad , a series of night-time powerful blasts echoed through the so-called Green Zone in central Baghdad area and Al-Muthna airport, the two main headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation, Aljazeera said.

The blasts were claimed by a self-styled group called the “Brigades of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin”, saying it was in retaliation for the assassination of the Hamas spiritual leader by Israeli occupation troops last week.

U.N. Team 

Meanwhile, a United Nations team arrived back Friday to advise on what sort of government should take power when the U.S.-led occupation authority  relinquishes power on June 30.

“Starting Monday, March 29, we will have meetings with the team in which we will discuss the annex on the future steps we are going to make towards sovereignty,” Mahmmoud Othman, a member of the U.S.-picked interim governing council, was quoted as saying by AFP.

Shiite politician and council member Muwaffaq Al-Rubaie said talks would focus on “the formation of an election commission, the writing of an election law and a political party law”.

“We also need to discuss the role of the mass media during the election period,” he added.

The return of the U.N. team, however, was not welcomed by many Iraqis, particularly the revered Shiite scholar Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.

“Despite the respect that Sistani has for [U.N. envoy Lakhadr] Brahimi, he does not wish to be a party to any meeting or consultation with the U.N. team,” AFP quoted the ayatollah's representative, Sheikh Nurredin Al-Safi, as saying.

“We want the United Nations to respect its promises and the will of the Iraqi people who gave their opinion very clearly,” he added.

On Monday, Sistani threatened to boycott the U.N. team if the world body endorses Iraq 's deeply criticized temporary constitution in a Security Council resolution.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan had pulled his team out of Iraq in August after a bomb attack on the U.N.'s Baghdad offices had killed top envoy Sergio Vieira De Mello and 21 others.