Allied warplanes attacked the Iraqi city of Samawa while foreign journalists were visiting to inspect damage from earlier raids, Iran's official news agency said Monday.
The Islamic Republic News Agency said in its report from Baghdad that reporters from about 30 news organizations were in Samawa when the raid occurred Sunday night.It said no information was immediately available about possible casualties and did not identify any of the journalists or their affiliations. It also was not known whether the journalists were still in Samawa, where the reporters might not have access to communications links capable of reaching the outside world.
Samawa is about 140 miles south of Baghdad, about halfway between the Iraqi capital and the southern port of Basra. On the Euphrates River, it is along a vital transportation route from Baghdad to the staging area for Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait.