BAGHDAD, Iraq – Rebels on Sunday launched their most intense assault on central Baghdad in months, raining mortars on the U.S.-controlled Green Zone and exploding a car bomb to destroy an American armored vehicle. The day of violence left at least 49 Iraqis dead and injured scores more across the country.

In one incident, U.S. helicopters fired into a crowd gathered around the disabled Bradley fighting vehicle.

The airstrike, which the military said is under investigation, was captured on film when a correspondent for an Arabic-language television network was mortally wounded by shrapnel from the strike in the midst of taping a report. Reporter Mazen al-Tumeizi, 25, was talking into the camera, with flames and bystanders in the background, when a sharp blast buckled him forward. The camera swung away with blood on the lens, as al-Tumeizi yelled, “I am dying. I am dying.”

The images and the death toll provided a bleak illustration of the unremitting bloodshed left by Iraq’s 17-month insurgency, proving that, more than two months after an interim Iraqi government took power with a pledge to bring security, rebels still strike the heart of the capital at will. By day’s end, 25 Iraqis had died in Baghdad, while other clashes left 10 dead in the southern city of Hillah and 14 in the western city of Ramadi, according to the Iraqi Health Ministry.

No U.S. deaths were reported Sunday, but six soldiers were wounded in the car bomb attack that destroyed the Bradley fighting vehicle, military officials said.

Three Polish soldiers were killed and at least three more were injured in fighting while returning from a de-mining mission near Hillah, Polish forces said. The deaths raised to 13 the number of Polish soldiers killed in Iraq.

Even as they fought in much of the country, U.S.-led troops said they had peacefully retaken the embattled city of Tal Afar early Sunday, three days after fierce clashes with insurgents closed off the city and sent thousands of residents fleeing.

Roughly 2,000 U.S. soldiers in high-tech Stryker armored vehicles headed into the city at 3:15 a.m. to root out militias and secure the city, spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings said. U.S. troops stationed just outside Tal Afar had been involved in escalating battles and expected fierce resistance. But the troops secured the city without a struggle, Hastings said.

U.S. commanders said they did not immediately know the whereabouts of an estimated 200 guerrillas who had been fighting American troops with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and mortars. During the past two weeks, fighting in Tal Afar, a remote northwest city near the Syrian border, killed an estimated 67 insurgents, officials said.

Outside Baghdad on Sunday, a suicide bomber attempted to ram his car into the gate of Abu Ghraib prison, but U.S. guards fired back and caused the car to explode before it breached the gate, the military said.

The most serious violence of the day was on Baghdad’s Haifa Street, a main thoroughfare that is home largely to Palestinian and Syrian expatriates and has been a frequent site of clashes with U.S. troops. The slain journalist, al-Tumeizi, was one of those Palestinian immigrants, who had settled in Baghdad with his family seven years ago.

A 2002 graduate of Baghdad University, al-Tumeizi had found work last summer as a producer for Al-Arabiya television.

After the airstrike, Al-Tumeizi was rushed to a hospital with injuries to his back, leg and arm and died 90 minutes later, said Wehad Yacoub, Baghdad bureau manager for Al-Arabiya.

On Sunday, al-Tumeizi was asleep at 4 a.m. when the rebels’ mortar onslaught began, said his roommate, Rajih Khalil al-Talahma, who was injured in the U.S. airstrike.

U.S. troops moved into the area, hiding behind trees and walls as they fought with guerrillas in the street and among apartment complexes, al-Talahma said. At 6:50 a.m., a U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle on its way to help a group of soldiers was hit by a car bomb, injuring two soldiers, the military said, and four others were wounded by grenades and gunfire during the evacuation.

With the soldiers gone, a crowd swarmed the burning vehicle and celebrated, some hoisting a flag with “Unity and Holy War,” the name of the militant group loyal to Jordanian rebel leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has claimed responsibility for months of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks in Iraq.

Al-Tumeizi raced to the scene from his apartment with a Reuters cameraman and the pair teamed up to tape a report. He was set to leave when he realized he had forgotten to film a sign-off that included his name and station identification.

“He said, “Let’s go back,”‘ al-Tumeizi’s roommate, his head bandaged and his leg broken, recalled at al Karch Hospital. “The cameraman didn’t even set up a tripod because it was (to be) so short. Then we heard the helicopters.”

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Fadhel al-Ma’amouri, a friend of al-Tumeizi’s and a fellow Al-Arabiya producer, said, “After he was shot, he called me on my phone and said, “They shot us.’ He couldn’t continue speaking, but his friend took the phone. He was a great colleague and I am deeply sad about this.”

Al-Tumeizi’s parents learned of his death by watching the footage of the air strike on television, al-Ma’amouri said.

The Iraqi cameraman for Reuters was injured, as well as an Iraqi freelance photographer for Getty Images, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, whose photographs from Iraq have appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Al-Tumeizi was the 33rd journalist killed in Iraq since the invasion last year.

In a statement later, the military said, two Kiowa helicopters “received small-arms fire from the insurgents in vicinity of the vehicle. Clearly within the rules of engagement, the helicopters returned fire destroying some anti-Iraqi forces in the vicinity of the Bradley.”

The military statement said the helicopters did not shoot directly at the crowd surrounding the vehicle because the “air crew could not discriminate between armed insurgents and civilians on the ground.”

But speaking before the statement was released, a U.S. military spokesman said the helicopters also fired directly at the disabled and surrounded vehicle to prevent the crowd from stealing gear and weapons.

“There was no way to determine if the individuals on and around the Bradley were attempting to take equipment and explosives from the vehicle to be used against the Iraqi and multi-national forces,” said the spokesman. “The primary mission was to destroy the vehicle.”

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The death toll from that airstrike was undetermined; the Health Ministry said, in total, the Haifa Street violence killed 13 people and injured 61.

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(Chicago Tribune correspondent Rick Jervis contributed to this report from Mosul.)

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(c) 2004, Chicago Tribune.

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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): usiraq

AP-NY-09-12-04 2037EDT