A second Iran journalist, within two days, was killed on monday in an ambbush north of Baghdad that left his two security guards wounded, according to police and relatives.
Dhi Abdul-Razak Al-Dibo,a 32-year-old freelance reporter, was driving his BMW with his guards near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, Kirkuk police spokesman, Brig, Gen. Sarhat Qadir, said.
AL-Dibo’s family said he lived in Kirkuk and contributed stories to at least two weekly newspapers in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The relatives, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they feared reprisals, said Al-Dibo is survived by his wife.
The attack occurred a day after The Washington Post said one of its Iraqi correspondents was also shot dead while on assignment in Baghdad. Salih Saif Aldin, 32, an Iraqi who sometimes wrote under the name, Salih Dehema, for securirty reasons, was killed on sunday while reporting on the violence in the neighbourhood of Sadiyah, according to a statement from the newspaper.
Sadiyah is a formerly religiously mixed neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad that is now dominated by Shiites after most Sunnis were driven out by sectarian violence. Aldin began working for the newspaper in early 2004 as a stringer inhis hometown of Tikrit and later moved to the capitals, the newspaper said. Iraqi journalists working for local or international media frequently come under threats from insurgents because of their reporting or their affiliation with western organisations.
Excluding the latest deaths reported, at least 118 journalists and 41 media support workers have been killed in Iraq since the war started in March 2003, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect journalists.