Four journalists shot dead in Iraq

Lebanon News.Net
Wednesday 9th May, 2007

Gunmen opened fire on a car close to the southwest city of Kirkuk in Iraq Wednesday, killing four journalists.

In what has been a shocking week for journalists in the war-torn country, this latest incident defies logic. It is not known whether the shootings were at random, or whether the journalists were targeted.

Police said the incident took place near a small town, Rashad, which is just southwest of Kirkuk.

One of the journalists, police said, was the well-known director of a local media organisation which publishes several newspapers.

All four were Iraqis.

Their deaths follow that of a Newsweek photographer who was killed on Sunday by a roadside bomb in an attack that also killed six U.S. soldiers from the Task Force “Lightning” unit with which he was embedded.

Meantime Reporters Without Borders has voiced deep concern about two armed attacks on privately-owned Radio Dijla in Baghdad last week that left one person dead and two wounded. The organisation also condemned the death of Dmitry Chebotayev, the Newsweek photographer..

“The two attacks on Radio Dijla, one after the other, were like military raids,” Reporters Without Borders said. “This independent station was assaulted by an organised military force equipped with heavy artillery. The attack took place in central Baghdad without any intervention from police units patrolling nearby. The Iraqi authorities must shoulder some of the blame for this latest episode in the cycle of violence against journalists and the media.”

The press freedom organisation added: “Chebotayev’s death highlights the risks that foreign journalists continue to take in order to cover Iraq, whether or not they are embedded with any military force. We offer our condolences to his family and to Newsweek’s management.”

About 10 gunmen launched the first of the two attacks on Radio Dijla in the west Baghdad neighbourhood of Al Jami’a at around 9 am. The employees were able to hold them off using firearms previously provided by the management as security precaution. At the same time, four employees eluded a kidnap attempt by fleeing into the stations’s premises.

The station appealed to the police and military authorities for help, but no help was sent during the attack, which lasted half an hour. The gunmen shot security guard Adel Al-Badri dead and wounded two other employees.

The second attack took place several hours later, after all the employees had abandoned the building, and was presumably carried out by the same group. They set explosive charges in the building’s first floor and started a fire, destroying the station’s transmitter and causing a lot of other damage. Radio Dijla nonetheless hoped to resume broadcasting within 72 hours.

174 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Two are missing while 12 are kidnapped.

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