Call for effective protection for journalists after a newspaper reporter is kidnapped and a photographer is killed

After learning of the kidnapping of Al-Dawa reporter Karim Sabri Sharar Al-Rubai and the murder of freelance photographer Munjid Al-Tumaimi, Reporters Without Borders today appealed again to the Iraqi authorities to take concrete measures to protect media personnel. “No less than eight media personnel have been killed since the start of the year,” the press freedom organisation said. “The international public is less aware of the kidnappings because they affect local journalists, but they are no less deadly for that. There are a total of seven kidnap victims at the moment about whom there is no news.” Reporters Without Borders added: “We will not give up demanding proper investigations to identify those who are murdering and abducting journalists, and to put an end to the climate of complete impunity prevailing in Iraq.” Rubai was kidnapped on 11 January by gunmen who forced their way into his Baghdad home and took him away. His family has still not received any word of his fate. His newspaper, Al-Dawa, is the mouthpiece of the Islamic Dawa Party, a Shiite party. Tumaimi was gunned down in Najaf (160 km south of Baghdad) on 28 January as he tried to take pictures in the city's hospital of people who had been killed or injured in the course of clashes near Najaf with more than 300 casualties. His killers, who were not identified, took his camera and mobile phone. Reporters Without Borders offers its condolences to the family of Suhad Shakir Al Kinani, who was fatally wounded in Baghdad on 4 February when her car was caught in the crossfire during a shootout between a coalition patrol and an armed group. Kinani used to be a journalist with the Iraqi Media Network, but last September she went to work for the Iraqi parliament's press office. A total of 147 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the start of the war in 2003, while a total of 55 journalists have been kidnapped. Seven are still being held hostage.