By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 30, 2006

BAGHDAD, Jan. 29 -- A co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" and an ABC cameraman suffered serious head wounds Sunday in a roadside bomb attack in Taji, north of Baghdad. They were stabilized at a military hospital and were later flown to Germany for further medical care, the network said in a statement.

Bob Woodruff, 44, who took over the anchor duties for the weeknight broadcast earlier this month, and cameraman Doug Vogt were embedded with the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division but were traveling with an Iraqi unit in an Iraqi vehicle when the explosion occurred, ABC News President David Westin said in a statement. An Iraqi soldier was also wounded in the attack, which took place at 12:25 p.m., the U.S. military reported.

ABC News said on its Web site that both Woodruff and Vogt were partially exposed because they were standing in the vehicle's hatch. They both suffered head injuries, and Woodruff also suffered wounds to his upper body, the network said. They were flown to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone and then to a hospital on a U.S. base in Balad, northwest of the capital, where both underwent lengthy surgeries that stabilized their conditions.

"We take this as good news, but the next few days will be critical," Westin said. The injured journalists were later flown to a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

Before the attack, Woodruff and Vogt, part of a four-man ABC team, had switched from an American Humvee to the Iraqi vehicle. The ABC crew was riding in the lead vehicle in a U.S.-Iraqi convoy at the time of the explosion, which was followed by small-arms fire, the network reported. The journalists were wearing body armor, helmets and ballistic glasses.

According to a U.S. military official who was briefed on the incident but spoke on the condition of anonymity, the attack came as they rode in a Soviet-made MT-LB armored personnel carrier, a 12-ton vehicle that can carry about a dozen soldiers. It is described as "lightly armored" on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, which catalogues the specifications of military equipment. The armor in its turret is said to be seven to 14 millimeters thick.

"It looks like what got them was standing up in the turret," the military official said, adding that doing so was less safe but not unusual. "Another guy inside didn't have a scratch on him."

Woodruff, who anchors "World News Tonight" with Elizabeth Vargas, is an experienced war correspondent who has reported from the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and was embedded with a Marine reconnaissance unit during the invasion of Iraq. A Michigan native, he has four children.

Vogt, a Canadian, has 25 years of experience, is a three-time Emmy Award winner and is now based in Europe, according to a biography posted on a Web site devoted to photojournalists.

The incident was one of several attacks that killed more than a dozen people Sunday across Iraq, including at least three in a series of apparently coordinated bombings targeting churches in the northern city of Kirkuk. Nearly simultaneous explosions at two churches in Baghdad and at the Vatican Embassy in the Iraqi capital caused only minor injuries.

In Kirkuk, insurgents detonated a car bomb near the city's Orthodox Church during a Sunday afternoon Mass, according to Gen. Burhan Tayyib of the Iraqi police. The explosion killed one civilian and wounded five. Ten minutes later, a second explosion targeted the Virgin Mary Church for the Chaldeans, killing two and wounding seven.

Tayyib said the attacks were "a message from the terrorists to create sectarian strife."

In Baghdad, sectarian tension has mounted recently as near-daily raids by the predominately Shiite Muslim police force -- which is accused of carrying out assassinations with impunity and of being controlled by Shiite militias -- have enraged residents of largely Sunni Arab neighborhoods.

On Sunday, Sunni politician Adnan Dulaimi said police were conducting a "sectarian cleansing" of the city. He demanded that in the country's next government, which politicians are in the process of forming, ministries controlling Iraq's security forces be put beyond the control of politicians with links to militias.

Appointments to lead the two security-oriented ministries are expected to be highly contentious. The Interior Ministry is currently led by Bayan Jabr, whose party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, controls a feared Shiite militia called the Badr Organization. The Defense Ministry is led by Sadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni.

Militia involvement in the police force has also inflamed tension in the southern city of Basra, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered Sunday outside a British army headquarters to protest the recent detention of five policemen. The provincial government has threatened to cease cooperation with the British if the men are not released.

The crowd was led by followers of outspoken cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia retains strong influence over the local police force.

Also on Sunday, the governor of Baghdad said in an interview that investigators had collected names and addresses of suspects in the abduction of American reporter Jill Carroll and the killing of her translator more than three weeks ago. Gov. Hussein Taha said the suspects have ties to the Amariyah neighborhood of Baghdad and that an undisclosed number of arrests had been made. At least one of the men believed to be involved was carrying a phony police identification card, he said.

Carroll, 28, is a freelance reporter who was working for the Christian Science Monitor at the time of her abduction. Her captors released a videotape threatening to kill her if all female detainees in U.S. custody were not released. Five women were released from American facilities last week, though at least four are still being held.

Staff writers Nelson Hernandez in Baghdad and Thomas E. Ricks in Balad and special correspondents Omar Fekeiki, Bassam Sebti and Salih Saif Aldin in Baghdad and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.