WAR DEVELOPMENTS

IRAQ

> An American journalist for National Public Radio and three Iraqi colleagues escaped injury Sunday when a bomb attached to their car exploded as it was parked along a street in west Baghdad. Ivan Watson, a 33-year-old reporter for NPR, a producer-translator and two drivers were returning to their armored car when they were stopped by Iraqi soldiers who said they had just been informed that a bomb was attached to the vehicle. The bomb, underneath the driver’s side, exploded about 15 feet from the NPR journalists, but no one was injured.

> U.N. and Iraqi officials on Sunday revealed a plan to make Iraq’s Jan. 31 provincial elections more transparent and fair. Unlike the contests in 2005, the 2009 ballots will include candidates’ names, not just lists of political parties. Iraq concealed the identities of candidates in the previous voting as a safety measure.

PAKISTAN

> Six Pakistani security officers and two suspected militants were killed Sunday in new violence close to the Afghan border. An attack by militants on a security post in Bannu town left three officers and two attackers dead, and in the nearby Lakki Marwat district, Taliban fighters fired rockets at a checkpoint, killing three police.

AFGHANISTAN

> A suicide bomber on foot blew himself up near a German Embassy vehicle in Afghanistan’s capital, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding three others.

> A soldier with the NATO-led force shot and killed an Afghan policeman in a car that was driving toward a NATO patrol at high speed in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province. Soldiers warned the approaching vehicle with hand signals, a mini flare and warning shots, but fired when it continued moving toward the convoy, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force said.

> Taliban militants who kidnapped two Afghan journalists released them after three days in captivity. The two journalists freed late Saturday were Dawa Khan Menapal of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Aziz Popal, who works for a local TV station in Kandahar. The two were kidnapped in Ghazni province on Wednesday as they were driving on the country’s main Kabul-Kandahar highway.