BAGHDAD, Aug 3: Fourteen marines were killed on Wednesday in one of the deadliest attacks on US forces since the invasion of Iraq, and an American freelance reporter was gunned down in the relatively calm south. The marines, along with an interpreter, were killed when their armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb during combat operations near Haditha, 260 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, the US military said.

One other marine was wounded. The latest deaths bring the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 1,811, according to AFP tally based on Pentagon figures. Since Monday a total of 21 marines have been killed in Iraq’s Al-Anbar province. A total of 37 US troops have been killed over the past eight days.

Ansar al-Sunna, an extremist group reportedly linked with the Al Qaeda network, said in an Internet statement it had killed eight US marines and captured a ninth in western Iraq. The US military denied capture of any of its marines. The group said it killed some marines on Monday by “slitting their throats,” while others were shot and vowed to publish more details on the killings and pictures of the “American prisoner” later. The statement could not be verified.

Wednesday’s attack on marines is the deadliest on US forces since a December 21 lunchtime blast at a US base in the northern town of Mosul that killed 22, including 18 Americans, 14 of them US soldiers and four civilians. Meanwhile, US journalist Steven Vincent, 50, was shot dead after being snatched on Tuesday evening from a street in central Basra along with his female Iraqi translator who was shot twice but survived.

“There were four gunmen in a white pick-up truck and they kidnapped the two,” police lieutenant-colonel Karim al-Zaidi told AFP. Mr Vincent, apparently the first US journalist to be kidnapped and killed, was wearing a black T-shirt that had a photograph of revered Shiite saint Hussein Ali and a symbolic necklace usually worn by Shias, sources said.

“Vincent’s body was recovered by local Basra authorities and the US forces along with the British forces will determine who is responsible for the death,” US embassy acting spokesman Peter J. Mitchell said.