A British soldier was shot dead today by enemy fire in south-eastern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said.
The soldier, from the 7th Armoured Brigade, serving with the 1st Battalion The Highlanders, was a member of a patrol which came under small arms fire at 0840 GMT in Maysan province. He died from his injuries.
Maysan Province, which borders Iran, is traditionally home to many Marsh Arabs. Britain has about 8,000 military personnel in four southern Iraqi provinces, mostly based around the city of Basra.
John Reid, the Defence Secretary, said he was very saddened by the news, and that his thoughts were with the soldier’s family and friends.
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An MoD spokesman said that no other British personnel were injured in the attack. “The soldier’s immediate family have been informed, but have asked for some time to come to terms with the news,” the spokesman said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this very difficult time.”
The shooting came hours after one of America’s best-known journalists and his cameraman were seriously injured while reporting in Iraq. Bob Woodruff, an anchorman for ABC News, and Doug Vogt, a cameraman, both suffered head injuries in a roadside bombing.
The men have been flown to a military hospital in Germany where they were today under heavy sedation.
“They’re both very seriously injured, but stable,” said Colonel Bryan Gamble, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in western Germany, where badly injured US servicepeople are sent for treatment.
He added that the two men, whose families were with them, were under care of the hospital’s trauma team.
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Colonel Gamble said that their body armour probably saved them, “otherwise these would have been fatal wounds”.
Woodruff and Vogt were embedded with the US 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for US operations around Baghdad. The two journalists were traveling in a convoy with US and Iraqi troops near Taji, about 12 miles (19 km) north of the Iraqi capital.
They were standing up in the hatch of their vehicle, exposed, when the device exploded. An Iraqi soldier also was hurt in the explosion.
Woodruff, a father of four, has been at ABC News since 1996. He grew up in Michigan and became a corporate lawyer in New York, but changed fields soon after a stint teaching law in Beijing in 1989 and helping CBS News during the chaos of the Tiananmen Square protest.
Vogt, 46, is a three-time Emmy award-winning cameraman from Canada who has spent the last 20 years based in Europe.
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This latest death takes the number of British personnel who have died while serving in Iraq since March 2003 to 99. Of these, 76 are classed as being killed in action, while 23 have died from illness, non-combat injuries, accident or an unknown cause. America has lost 2,242 servicepeople.
In addition, 230 British troops have been injured in enemy action since the March 2003 invasion. A total of 40 people had suffered life-threatening injuries.
Mr Reid released the injury figures earlier this month after the wife of a badly wounded soldier called on ministers to be more open. Peter Norton, 43, lost an arm and a leg in a bomb blast and his wife, Sue, had said ministers should reveal how many more had been injured.