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Iraqi New York Times Journalist Killed    [

    Reuters Photographer and Driver Killed In Iraq
    Reuters

    Thursday 12 July 2007

    London - An Iraqi photographer and driver working for Reuters in Iraq were killed in Baghdad on Thursday in what witnesses said was a U.S. helicopter attack but which the military described as a firefight with insurgents.

    Iraqi police blamed American military action for the deaths.

    Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in eastern Baghdad, the international news and information company said.

    The U.S. military said the pair died after a clash between its troops and insurgents. The incident was under investigation, it said in a statement.

    U.S. and Iraqi forces engaged "a hostile force" after coming under fire and attack aircraft were called in.

    Nine insurgents and two civilians were killed, the military said. The "two civilians were reported as employees for the Reuters news service," it added.

    A preliminary police report obtained by Reuters said Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh had been killed by a "random American bombardment" that had killed nine other people.

    The report was issued by the al-Rashad police station, the closest station to the scene. Reuters obtained a photocopy of the report. It was based upon witness accounts of the incident and signed by a lieutenant-colonel, the head of the station.

    The deaths take to six the number of Reuters employees killed in Iraq since U.S.-led forces invaded the country in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.

    "Once again we are left mourning colleagues who have met an untimely death while doing their job in Iraq," said Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer.

    "Our sympathies and thoughts are with their families, friends and colleagues today," added Glocer.

    "Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh's outstanding contribution to reporting on the unfolding events in Iraq has been vital. They stand alongside other colleagues in Reuters who have died doing a job that they believe in."

    Combat Operations

    The U.S. military statement said American and Iraqi forces had been carrying out a raid when they were attacked with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.

    "There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force," Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, said in the statement.

    Noor-Eldeen had earlier called a Reuters colleague to say he was taking photographs of a damaged building.

    Witnesses interviewed by Reuters in the al-Amin al-Thaniyah neighborhood said Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh, who also worked as a cameraman's assistant, were near the building around the time a U.S. helicopter fired on a minivan.

    "The aircraft began striking randomly and people were wounded. A Kia (minivan) arrived to take them away. They hit the Kia and killed ... the two journalists," said one witness, Karim Shindakh.

    Shindakh and three other witnesses said U.S. soldiers came and took Noor-Eldeen's camera equipment.

    TV footage showed the front of the minivan had been badly mangled. There was a large hole in the roof. A pool of blood lay near the curb, while shrapnel marks pocked the wall of a house.

    Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger said the deaths were a tragic reminder of the risks journalists face in covering the war in Iraq.

    "The job our reporters do is a critical one - telling the world what is happening on the streets of Iraq on a daily basis," said Schlesinger.

    "Reuters will continue to do all it can to protect journalists who must work in dangerous and difficult conditions but still have a right to do their jobs."

    Noor-Eldeen was single. Chmagh was married with four children.

 

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    Iraqi New York Times Journalist Killed
    The Associated Press

    Friday 13 July 2007

    Baghdad - Gunmen killed an Iraqi journalist from The New York Times as he drove to work Friday, the third staffer of a Western news organization to be killed in the past two days. In his last moments, Khalid W. Hassan called his mother on his cell phone and told her he had been shot.

    Hassan, 23, was the second Times employee killed in the Iraq conflict, in which 110 journalists and 40 media support staffers have been killed since the 2003 U.S. invasion, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

    The Times said the circumstances of the attack remain unclear. Hassan was driving to work when he called the bureau to say his normal route to the office was blocked by a security checkpoint so he was taking a different path.

    Less than an hour later, he was attacked in the Sadiyah district of southwest Baghdad. He was able to call his mother, telling her, "I've been shot." His family later called the bureau and reported he had been killed, the paper said.

    Hassan, who worked for the paper in Baghdad for four years, "was part of a large, sometimes unsung community of Iraqi news-gatherers, translators, and support staff, who take enormous risks every day to help us comprehend their country's struggle and torment," Times executive editor Bill Keller said. "Without them, Americans' understanding of what is happening on the ground in Iraq would be much, much poorer."

    The Times did not say whether it believed he was targeted because of his connection to the paper.

    Iraqi journalists working for local and international media frequently face threats from threats from insurgents and other militants for their reporting - and 71 have been killed, according to CPJ. Another 39 have died from being caught in bombings or the crossfire of clashes between U.S. or Iraqi soldiers and gunmen.

    On Tuesday, an Iraqi photographer and driver working for the Reuters news agency were killed during a battle in eastern Baghdad between U.S. forces and Shiite militiamen, during which a U.S. helicopter blasted targets on the ground and insurgents fired mortars and automatic weapons. The U.S. military said nine gunmen were killed in the battle, along with the two Reuters staffers, while Iraqi police and medical officials put the toll at 19, including other civilians.

    Nearly 85 percent of the journalists killed since the war began have been Iraqis, according to CPJ.

    The overall count by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders is even higher than CPJ's. It says more than 180 journalists and other employees of media organizations have been killed during the conflict.

    "There is no safe way to report on the streets of Baghdad. The fact that Khalid Hassan was shot on his way to work is a reminder that even the simplest, most routine functions of daily life can be deadly in an environment of rampant violence," the New York-based CPJ's executive director, Joel Simon, said in a statement expressing condolences over his death.

    In 2005, a stringer for the Times, Fakher Haider, was slain in the southern city of Basra. Five employees of The Associated Press have died violently in Iraq since the war began.