As some Iraqis looted new parts of Baghdad that had been opened up by US troops, two new clashes today indicated that Iraq's capital is still a battle zone. A gunman who shot dead a Marine guarding a hospital in Baghdad yesterday was a Syrian, U.S. Central Command said.

The marine, from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, was manning a checkpoint outside the hospital when he was approached by two men posing as landscape workers, o­ne of whom opened fire and killed him, a Central Command statement said.