The man was reportedly shot outside the Iraqi National Museum

A US military spokesman in the city said a UK journalist was killed by unknown assailants outside the Iraqi National Museum.

A fellow journalist has identified the body and next of kin in Britain have been informed, the UK Foreign Office said.

Official identification is expected within 24 hours and an investigation into the death has begun.

The Foreign Office said it was "urgently investigating reports of a British freelance journalist being shot" earlier on Saturday in the Iraqi capital.

"A body was found in central Baghdad today but prior to formal identification it would be wrong to comment further," the spokesman added.

It is believed the dead man, reportedly aged in his mid-20s, was working as a freelance journalist.

Hours after the killing an American soldier was critically injured when he was shot in the head at close range while chatting to students at Baghdad University.

Iraqis killed

Earlier on Saturday, at least seven Iraqis were killed and more than 50 were injured in an explosion near a police station in the town of Ramadi 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad.

Reports say the victims were new police recruits who had just finished training with US troops in Ramadi, about 60 miles west of Baghdad.

Fourteen journalists - two of them British - have been killed in Iraq since the war began.

ITN broadcaster Terry Lloyd was killed on 22 March in a "friendly fire" incident just a few days after the start of the war.

Still missing

His two colleagues, French cameraman Fred Nerac and Lebanese translator and driver Hussein Osman are still both missing, presumed dead.

Eight days later another British journalist, Gaby Rado, was found dead while reporting in Iraq.

The 48-year-old Channel 4 foreign affairs correspondent is believed to have fallen from the roof of the Abu Sanaa hotel at Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq.

And Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian cameraman working for BBC, was killed by landmine on 2 April, near Kifri in northern Iraq.