BAGHDAD, 10 February 2005 — The final results of the country’s elections were being delayed for recounts as gunmen yesterday shot dead a journalist for a US-funded television station amid a series of new attacks.

Iraqi police and army bore the brunt of the latest attacks, adding to the grim tally that has seen scores killed since the Jan. 30 polls, while the US military said three of its soldiers were killed since Sunday.

In Washington, the deputy commander of the US Central Command which covers Iraq said the number of American troops in the country would be reduced, after having been increased for the high-risk election period.

“We should be at pre-election levels in spring,” Lt. Gen. Lance Smith told reporters at the Pentagon. Military personnel in Iraq would be cut by roughly 13,000 to 19,000 soldiers, to between 135,000 and 140,000.

On the diplomatic front, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrapped up fence-mending talks in Brussles yesterday by saying trans-Atlantic relations with the European Union had recovered from the strains over Iraq.

An Italian newspaper, meanwhile, said it had information that its kidnapped reporter was in good health.

Final results from the vote had been expected today but Iraqi Election Commission official Farid Ayar said this had to be put back.

“The checking of the votes is going on and the result will be known in a few days, almost certainly after Feb. 10,” Ayar said.

The commission explained in a statement that the results had been delayed by the fact that some 300 ballot boxes had to be recounted.

With just over half the estimated vote of about eight million announced, the main Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, is leading the race, followed by a Kurdish coalition. Rebel violence has surged in the wake of the vote, however.

Abdel Hussein Khazaal, a correspondent for the Al-Hurra pan-Arab television station was gunned down as he left his home in the southern city of Basra, a provincial government official said.

Khazaal’s four-year-old son was also killed and his driver wounded by four masked gunmen waiting in a car outside the home, the official said.

The journalist’s killing was claimed in an Internet statement by a previously unknown militant group, the Imam Al-Hassan Al-Basri Brigades.

The group said Khazaal was a member of the “criminal traitor Badr Brigades,” the disarmed militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) which was previously based in Iran.

The employer of journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who was kidnapped in Baghdad last week, said she had been seen and was in good health, as an intelligence source said Rome was seeking mediation with her captors.

“A person has been able to see Giuliana twice, first on Monday then on Tuesday morning, and has indicated that she is in good health,” the left-wing daily Il Manifesto reported.

The journalist is being “held by the Sunni resistance in a zone outside of Baghdad”, the paper said.

Sgrena, 56, was abducted after visiting a Baghdad mosque where refugees have been encamped since a devastating US-led assault on the city of Fallujah in November.

Contradictory statements have been posted on websites in recent days, including one that the journalist had been executed — a claim immediately dismissed as unreliable by Rome.

Another statement issued on Monday said Sgrena would be released “within the next few days”, after it had been established that she was not spying for the US-led authorities in Iraq.

In continued violence, a roadside bombing in the restive Sunni city of Samarra killed four police, and a police colonel attached to the Oil Ministry, Riad Al-Yawi, was kidnapped by gunmen on a main road in southern Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.

A US soldier was killed yesterday in an attack on his convoy north of the Iraqi capital.

— Additional input from agencies