Another journalist killed in Mosul, Iraq's second-most dangerous city for the press

Reporters Without Borders said it was appalled today by the news of the killing of Ahmed Hussein Al Maliki, an Iraqi journalist working for a local newspaper, whose body was found yesterday in the northern city of Mosul. He had been shot, probably not long before his body was discovered. “He is the fifth journalist to be murdered since the start of the year in Mosul, where journalists have been deliberately targeted in recent months and where there are reasons for thinking the situation will not improve in the coming months,” the press freedom organisation said. Maliki was kidnapped by insurgents as he was leaving an Internet café in a northern district of the city just over two months ago. No group ever claimed responsibility for his abduction. Married and with children, Maliki was the 74th journalist to be killed in Iraq since the start of the war. The newspaper he worked for, Tall Afar (Today), is an independent weekly covering local news in Mosul, a mainly Sunni city 400 km north of Baghdad.