BAGHDAD -- The bullet-riddled body of an Iraqi newspaper reporter was recovered yesterday in Baghdad, as police in Basra launched an intensive search for a Western journalist working for CBS News and his Iraqi translator.
Journalists have been frequent targets in Iraq, which the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said remains the world's most deadly country for news media workers despite recent security gains.
The slain Iraqi journalist was identified as Hisham Muchawat Hamdan, 27, a member of Iraq's Young Journalists' League who reported for three local newspapers.
Police and colleagues said Hamdan disappeared Sunday on his way to the league's offices in downtown Baghdad. His body was delivered to the main morgue without identification, so officials did not know who he was until relatives turned up looking for him.
Meanwhile, dozens of lawmakers walked out of Iraq's parliament yesterday, thwarting the latest attempt to pass a national budget and other laws. The standoff underscored the suspicion that remains between the country's major ethnic and religious factions, a major obstacle to the kinds of power-sharing arrangements that U.S. officials believe are key to long-term stability.
In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city where rival Shiite Muslim militias have been vying for control, police cordoned off the Sultan Palace Hotel, the location they said the CBS journalists were taken from Sunday in armored vehicles.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility. But Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said investigators had identified the "gang" holding the journalists and believed it had received help from inside the police force.
"One of those accused is from the police," Khalaf said in Baghdad.
CBS News confirmed Monday that two of its journalists were missing but asked that they not be identified.
Followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr distanced themselves yesterday from the journalists' disappearance and called for their immediate release. Muhannad Hashimi, an al-Sadr representative in Basra, said his movement's dispute was with "the occupation forces and not with civilian foreigners, especially journalists."
At least 15 other journalists, all of them Iraqis, are being held hostage in the country, Reporters Without Borders said in a statement yesterday. "Yet again it is journalists who are paying dearly for the chronic insecurity in one of the country's biggest cities," the group said.
Iraqi parliamentarians have been arguing for weeks about the national budget, an amnesty bill and legislation governing the distribution of power between the central government and provincial authorities.
In a bid to break the deadlock, the main blocs representing the country's majority Shiite groups, their Kurdish allies and the Sunni minority agreed to approve the three laws as a package at a rare night session yesterday. But squabbling broke out over the order in which the bills should be voted.
Mahmoud Mashhadani, the Sunni speaker of parliament, wanted to begin with the amnesty bill, which could see the release of thousands of mostly Sunni detainees. The measure aims to mollify the main Sunni alliance, which pulled its six ministers out of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Cabinet last year.
But Kurdish lawmakers, fearing that many parliament members would leave the meeting once they had the bill they wanted, demanded that the budget be considered first. Some Sunni and Shiite politicians have opposed the allocation of 17 percent of the budget to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, arguing that it no longer represents that much of the population. Many walked out yesterday after the Kurds made their demands, and there was no vote.
In frustration, Mashhadani said he should disband parliament if its members cannot reach agreement. But lawmakers said it was a toothless threat because Iraq's constitution stipulates that the speaker can do so only if a majority of the legislature agrees.
In other developments, a morgue official in Baqouba said a grave containing 13 bodies was discovered near Muqdadiyah, about 30 miles northeast of the Diyala provincial capital. The victims, who appeared to have been killed months ago, were found handcuffed and shot in the head, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to communicate with the news media. Some showed signs of torture, he said.
Similar graves have been found in the area northeast of Baghdad, which until recently was under the sway of Sunni militants. But the U.S. military, which has launched a major campaign to dislodge the insurgents, said it had no reports to substantiate the claim.
Alexandra Zavis writes for the Los Angeles Times.