More armed attacks on media personnel in Baghdad, Mosul and Baquba

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the killings of five media employees (three journalists and two drivers) in Mosul and Baghdad in the past few days, as well as armed attacks on a journalist's home in Baquba and a Shiite TV station in Baghdad. “Most of these cases are targeted attacks designed to eliminate or intimidate journalists,” the press freedom organisation said. “Although most of the violence against the press takes place in the capital, the latest cases show that no one is safe in Iraq. Armed groups single out journalists for silencing in the most despicable manner throughout the country, especially if they work for partisan media with an editorial line the group concerned does not like.” Mohammed Al Ban, a cameraman with the Iraqi TV station Al Sharkiya, was killed outside his home in the Al Nur district of central Mosul (400 km north of Baghdad) on 13 November by gunmen in a car. The second Al Sharkiya employee to be killed since the start of the month, he also worked for the main local daily, Al Masar. Another journalist working for Al Masar, Fadia Mohammed Ali, was killed together with her driver as she was travelling to work in Mosul today. Journalist Qussai Abass of Tariq Al Shaab, a newspaper affiliated to the Communist Party, was gunned down with his driver in a similar fashion as he was travelling to the newspaper's office in Baghdad on 2 November. Two gunmen burst into the home of freelance journalist Ali Al Hajiyeh in the Al Tahrir district of Baquba, 40 km north of Baghdad, on 8 November, smashing doors and windows and stealing personal effects. Hajiyeh has just left the city to find refuge for his family in Baghdad after shots were fired at his home a few days earlier. Several mortar shells exploded at the entrance of the privately-owned Shiite TV station Al Anwar in Baghdad on 7 November, injuring five people including the station's security guards. A total of 133 journalists and media assistants have been killed since the start of the war in Iraq in 2003, while 51 have been kidnapped. Four of them are still being held hostage.