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An apparent car bomb killed at least five people, including a Western journalist, on Saturday at a checkpoint near a camp of a militant group linked to al-Qaida.

Also Saturday, Britain's ITN television news reported that three members of an ITN news crew were missing after coming under fire en route to Basra in southern Iraq.

The missing men were identified as reporter Terry Lloyd, cameraman Fred Nerac and translator Hussein Othman.

Another cameraman, Daniel Demoustier, was injured as the crew drove toward Basra in two vehicles. ITN said in London that Demoustier was not able to see what happened to his colleagues.

The checkpoint blast in northern Iraq injured eight people, who were taken to hospitals.

Journalists had gone to the checkpoint to interview refugees after the area a base for the al-Qaida-linked militant group Ansar al-Islam came under attack overnight by U.S. cruise missiles.

One of the cars coming out with the refugees exploded, witnesses and reporters said.

Killed at the checkpoint were a journalist, another civilian and three Kurdish soldiers. Their names were not made public.

The shattered remains of a car were scattered around the checkpoint, on a road near the village of Gerdigo.

The area is part of the Kurdish-controlled enclave protected from Saddam Hussein's forces by U.S. and British aircraft that patrol the no-fly zone over northern Iraq.

However, the Ansar al-Islam camp is outside the control of Kurdish forces.

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