Iraq Blast Kills Two On Crew For CBS

Dozier, born in Honolulu, has been a foreign correspondent specializing in the Middle East since the early 1990s and speaks Arabic and Hebrew. She has worked in radio and print -- she was a freelance reporter for The Washington Post in 1994 -- as well as television. She won three American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards for her reports on violence in the Middle East, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

"Every time Kimberly left, she wanted to know when she could go back to Iraq," McManus said. "She really lived for this story. She's passionate and brave and committed."

Murphy said that she had probably spent more time in Iraq than any other single American correspondent.

This attack and others Monday underlined the gravity of the problems facing the country's nine-day-old government. As Iraqi politicians continued a long debate over who will head the country's security ministries, more than 40 people died in eight bombings and several shootings, according to police and news reports. Military authorities also reported that two British soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in the city of Basra in southern Iraq on Sunday night.

The bloodiest attack was the bombing of a bus near Khalis, a predominantly Shiite town about 40 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala province. Fifteen people died, according to police and hospital officials. The passengers worked for the People's Mujaheddin Organization of Iran, a group opposed to the Shiite government of Iraq's eastern neighbor.

The explosion ripped through the middle of the bus. One passenger, Ahmed Bilal Thyab, interviewed while recuperating at a nearby hospital from wounds to his head and right arm, said he was in the back when the bomb exploded. "I saw the others die in front of me," Thyab said. "I survived because I wasn't in the middle."

Thyab thought the bus was attacked in Khalis because "most of the people there are Shiites and hate the People's Mujaheddin."

The organization maintained a military wing in Iraq during the government of President Saddam Hussein, which was intensely hostile to Iran during and after the 1980-88 war between the two countries. After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 ended Hussein's rule, the organization was disarmed and took a lower profile. Shiites dominate Iraq's new government.

Another bombing, in northern Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood, claimed eight lives, an Iraqi army officer said.

Maj. Abbas Khudhaiyer described what happened, in an account confirmed by another witness. A man wearing a brown tracksuit -- and a hidden explosive belt -- placed a box on the front seat of a minibus waiting on a street packed with vendors who sell clothes. A soldier, seeing the suspicious activity, ran toward the man and stopped him.

"Who are you? Why did you drop that box there? What does it have?" the soldier demanded.

"I'm just a passenger and I'm going to ride in the minibus," the man replied. "I'm going to go to Shulah," another neighborhood in Baghdad.

"Show me some identification," the soldier said.

"I don't have any identification," the man said.

The soldier grabbed him by the hand, apparently intending to take him to his officers for questioning, but then the man detonated his explosive belt, which also set off a bomb in the box.

Just before the explosion, Hussein Abdel Ghaffar, a bystander, saw a woman walking hand-in-hand with her 8-year-old boy along the street. After the detonation, the boy was gone. The mother, hysterical, couldn't find him. Ghaffar helped, and found the boy's mutilated body.

"The thing that stayed in my mind, and I will never forget it, is that mother who lost her kid," Ghaffar said. "I was only able to bring her the upper half of his body."

Staff writers Lois Romano in Washington and Howard Kurtz in Los Angeles and special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad, Hassan Shammari in Khalis and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.