11th Al-Iraqiya employee gunned down in Baghdad

Reporters Without Borders voiced its condolences to the family of TV sports presenter Jaafar Ali, who was gunned down this morning in Baghdad. He was the third journalist to be killed in Iraq in the space of 48 hours and the 11th employee of the national TV station Al-Iraqiya to be killed since the start of the war in March 2003. Alarmed by the surge in attacks on journalists, Reporters Without Borders reiterated its appeal to the Iraqi authorities to do everything possible to protect them. Gunmen shot Ali as he left his home in Chora Rabia, a neighbourhood in south Baghdad. His TV station, Al-Iraqiya, has had more employees killed than any other media since the start of the war. It is part of the Iraqi Media Network, who is close to the Shiite parties currently in the government. Two British journalists working for the US television network CBS, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, were killed on 29 May during an attack in Baghdad on the US military unit in which they were embedded. A total of 97 journalists and media assistants have been killed and 48 have been kidnapped since the start of the war. Five of the kidnap victims (four Iraqis and Enzo Baldoni of Italy) were killed. Thirty-two of these abductions have taken place in or near Baghdad. Three journalists are currently been held hostage: Reem Zeid and Marwan Khazaal of the Iraqi TV station Al-Sumariya and Salah Jali al-Gharrawi, an employee of the Baghdad bureau of the Agence France-Presse (AFP). May has been an especially deadly month for the press, with a total of eight journalists and media assistants killed.