One of America's best-known journalists and his cameraman were in a stable condition today after being seriously injured while reporting in Iraq yesterday.

Bob Woodruff, an anchorman for ABC News, and Doug Vogt, a cameraman, both suffered head injuries in a roadside bombing.

The men have been flown to a military hospital in Germany where they were today under heavy sedation.

"They’re both very seriously injured, but stable," said Colonel Bryan Gamble, commander of the Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in western Germany, where badly injured US servicepeople are sent for treatment.

He added that the two men, whose families were with them, were under care of the hospital’s trauma team.

Colonel Gamble said that their body armour probably saved them, "otherwise these would have been fatal wounds".

Woodruff and Vogt were embedded with the US 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for US operations around Baghdad. The two journalists were traveling in a convoy with US and Iraqi troops near Taji, about 12 miles (19 km) north of the Iraqi capital.

They were standing up in the hatch of their vehicle, exposed, when the device exploded. An Iraqi soldier also was hurt in the explosion.

Woodruff, a father of four, has been at ABC News since 1996. He grew up in Michigan and became a corporate lawyer in New York, but changed fields soon after a stint teaching law in Beijing in 1989 and helping CBS News during the chaos of the Tiananmen Square protest.

Vogt, 46, is a three-time Emmy award-winning cameraman from Canada who has spent the last 20 years based in Europe.

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