Editor is found slain four days after abduction

BAGHDAD — The managing editor of a government-run newspaper launched with U.S. funding was found slain Sunday, the 85th Iraqi journalist to be killed in Iraq since the war began.

The body of Filaih Wadi Mijdab of the daily newspaper Al Sabah was discovered in Baghdad the same day authorities lifted a 4-day-old curfew imposed after the bombing of a Shiite Muslim mosque. Five bodies of unidentified men, apparent victims of sectarian killings, also were discovered Sunday.

Mijdab was kidnapped Wednesday by gunmen in several cars who intercepted his vehicle as he drove to work. Iraqi journalists are constant targets of insurgents. Of the 107 journalists killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003, at least 85 have been Iraqi, including Mijdab, according to statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Fourteen have been from the U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network, which includes Al Sabah and state-run Al Iraqiya television.

As many as 36 people were killed today in a fierce battle between Shiite militiamen and British forces doing house-to-house searches in Amarah, 190 miles southeast of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.

Iraqi police told AP that the Al Mahdi militia commanded by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr was involved in the clashes, which lasted about two hours.

In the capital Sunday, U.S. troops stepped up efforts to crush insurgents linked to Al Qaeda, part of an offensive announced a day earlier in conjunction with the arrival of the last of 28,500 extra troops sent to enforce President Bush’s security plan.

In one incident in western Baghdad, six suspected insurgents were killed during a shootout Sunday with U.S. forces, a military statement said.

Troops came under fire as they attempted to raid a building suspected of being used by a Libyan involved in suicide bombing operations, the statement said. They returned fire, killing the alleged insurgents. There were no reports of U.S. casualties.

Four more suspected insurgents were shot to death during a raid in Al Anbar province, the military announced.

Three U.S. soldiers were reported killed in northern Iraq. Brief statements said all three died Saturday in bomb blasts, two near Tikrit and the third in Kirkuk. At least 3,525 American troops have died in Iraq since 2003, according to the website icasualties.org.

The military Saturday said the arrival of additional U.S. troops, who began deploying to Iraq in February as part of Bush’s attempt to pacify the capital, had allowed commanders to put a new focus on Al Qaeda-allied groups. The offensive is aimed at cutting routes into Baghdad and destroying bomb factories.

The Iraqi government has accused groups linked to Al Qaeda of being behind Wednesday’s bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a major Shiite Muslim shrine. Iraqi officials imposed a curfew in Baghdad and Samarra to prevent revenge attacks on Sunni Muslims.

The curfew remained in effect in Samarra.

Some residents of Baghdad speculated that Iraqis had grown tired of Sunni-Shiite violence, which began to rise in February 2006 after the first bombing of the Golden Mosque. They also said that many Iraqis suspected U.S. involvement in the latest attack, a theory put forth by the Shiite cleric Sadr. He has said the U.S. and Israel planned the attack to instigate sectarian violence and divide Muslims.

“People are more aware now that there are foreign hands behind these incidents,” Zuhair Abdullah, 23, said.

Haidar Majeed, 21, agreed. Before the U.S. invasion, he said, sectarian bloodshed was rare.

“The Americans brought in terrorism with them. I don’t know if they did it intentionally or not, but I have no doubt about that,” he said.

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Times staff writer Said Rifai and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.