An American journalist and author has been found shot dead in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
A Western diplomat said the next of kin of Steven Vincent had been notified and an investigation was underway to determine who was behind the death.
The diplomat said he believed Vincent's body was found today.
Vincent was the author of a book on postwar Iraq and was researching another book about the history of Basra, where British troops are based.
An opinion piece he wrote criticising the rise of Shi'ite Islamist fundamentalism in Basra was published in the New York Timesfour days ago.
The article criticizes the failure of British forces to clamp down on what Vincent described as a city that was "increasingly coming under the control of Shi'ite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream ... to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr."