A 1st Armored Division soldier was killed on Friday and two others were injured in a roadside bombing in central Baghdad, according to a U.S. military spokesperson.
Elsewhere, the U.S.-led occupation launched an investigation Friday into the abduction of a Portuguese journalist in southern Iraq in an ambush that left another reporter wounded.
"We are still trying to locate him. We haven't got any update," said Allison Simmonds, a spokeswoman for the British forces leading the multinational troops in southern Iraq.
"We always take these things seriously. These people are criminals who maybe tried to steal his money, his car and his papers. These people are just crooks," she said, without providing further details.
The Portuguese journalist, Carlos Raleiras, who works for the private radio station TSF, managed to call the Portuguese news agency Lusa from his mobile phone after the convoy of Portuguese reporters, in which he was travelling, was attacked.
"I have been abducted. The situation is very complicated. I can't talk," said Raleiras.
"I am waiting for someone who speaks Arabic to please call me," he later told TSF as voices could be heard in the background.
The radio station has said it was looking for an Arabic interpreter.
Meanwhile, TSF director Jose Fragoso urged Portuguese media outlets to stop calling the reporter on his mobile as this was putting his life at risk and was causing the battery of the phone to run out.
Maria Joao Ruela, a correspondent for the private Portuguese television station SIC, was shot in the leg when the armed men attacked the three-jeep convoy just after it crossed into Iraq from Kuwait.
Ruela was taken to a British-run hospital in the southern port city of Basra where she is undergoing surgery, SIC reported. The station said she is in stable condition.
The Portuguese reporters, who were travelling without military protection, were attacked just minutes after crossing into Iraq, Lusa's Luis Castro told Portuguese state-run TV RTP.
Castro said gunmen in two vehicles started firing at the journalists. Two of the Portuguese jeeps accelerated to escape but the vehicle carrying the SIC and TSF correspondents - which was leading the convoy - turned back towards Kuwait and was caught in the ambush.
A SIC cameraman told TSF from Basra that when he helped the wounded Ruela get out of the ambushed jeep, the attackers climbed in and made off with Raleiras inside.
Portugal's interior ministry said in a statement it had asked British and American forces for "all their possible help" in the search for the journalist, AFP reported.
Thousands of British troops were searching the area for signs of Raleiras, a spokesman for Portugal's National Republican Guard (GNR) told TSF.
The reporters had been travelling to Basra to cover the arrival of 128 officers from the GNR, Portugal's military police.
The GNR contingent, which left Portugal earlier in the week, was originally due to be stationed in the southern city of Nasiriyah, but was relocated to Basra instead after a suicide bombing there Wednesday on an Italian military police base killed 18 Italians and nine Iraqis.
The Portuguese journalists had been advised not to cross over from Kuwait to Iraq to cover the arrival of the national guards as the situation in the region was highly unstable.
"The journalists were warned that Portugal was not in a position to guarantee their security if they travelled in Iraqi territory," the interior ministry said.
The attack was the second in two days on Portuguese correspondents in southern Iraq. (Albawaba.com)
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