A US serviceman on duty with a Marine unit was shot dead south of Baghdad today as the UN prepared to fly out more staff in the wake of this week's truck bombing attack.
A gunman shot the solider last night after approaching his vehicle, which had been caught up in traffic in the city of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad. The attacker escaped into a crowded market.
His death brings to 64 the number ofUSmilitary personnel killed by hostile action since PresidentGeorge W. Bush declared major combat over on May 1st.
US soldiers have faced daily guerrilla ambushes since the end of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, but such attacks were overshadowed this week by the suspected suicide bombing of the United Nations compound in Baghdad that killed 24 people.
Up to half the UN's Baghdad-based staff will have left Iraq by the end of the week, a UN official in Jordan said. Staff wounded in Tuesday's attack or traumatised by it have been authorised to leave.
The United Nations has been keen to stress the bombing will not force it to give up its mission of political and economic reconstruction and humanitarian work in Iraq. But it is clear that it will be severely affected, at least in the short term.
About 150 UN employees have been flown out of Iraq. At least another 50 will arrive in Jordan later today.
UN officials in Iraq will this evening fly out the body of Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, its Iraq mission chief who was among those killed by the blast.
The New York Timesreported that investigators were focusing on the possibility that Iraqi security guards at the UN compound had assisted the bombers. A UN spokeswoman in Iraq declined to comment on the report.
A previously unknown Islamist group claimed responsibility for the attack, Dubai-based Al Arabiya reported. The Arabic television channel said the group called itself the "Armed Vanguards of the Second Mohammed Army".