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Iraqi Kurdish woman journalist killed in
Mosul, northern Iraq
5.5.2008
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Iraqi
Kurdish woman journalist killed during botched
kidnap attempt in northern Iraqi, police say.
May 5, 2008
MOSUL, Northwest Iraq, -- Gunmen killed a
woman journalist during a botched kidnapping attempt
Sunday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police,
and family said.
Sarwa Abdul-Wahab, 36, worked as a lawyer defending
journalists' rights and freelanced Kurdistan
Reporters News Agency.
Police said Abdul-Wahab was walking from her home to
a market with her mother when two gunmen pulled up
in a car and tried to kidnap her. The gunmen shot
her twice in the head when she resisted, her mother
said.
Her mother, who identified herself as Umm Mohammed,
told The Associated Press that she asked the gunmen
to take her instead of her daughter.
"I begged the gunmen to kill me instead, they pushed
me away and told me that they wanted her not me,"
she said by telephone.
Abdul-Wahab was reporting from Mosul for a news
agency affiliated to Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan
Democratic Party,www.ekurd.net
said police Brig. Gen.
Khalid Abdul-Sattar, the security spokesman for
Nineveh province.
Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province in Iraq,
near the border with
semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, lies 405 km north
of Baghdad.
She was also a member of an association to defending
journalists' rights which was formed in 2003,
according to Yasir al-Hamadani, the director of the
Mosul branch.
"She was a member of our association which is based
in Baghdad but has a branch in Mosul," he said,
adding that Abdul-Wahab worked at the Salaheddin
satellite TV channel and at many local newspapers
before working for that agency.
"Besides her work as a journalist, she was activist
working with non-governmental organizations as well
as being a lawyer," al-Hamadani said. "We are very
sorry to lose her. She was very active and very
passionate about her work."
The attack took place at about 9:00 a.m. in Bakir
neighborhood in eastern Mosul, 360 kilometers (225
miles) northwest of Baghdad, Abdul-Sattar said.
The attack came just over a week after another group
of assailants on April 25 gunned down an Iraqi
journalist in the southern city of Basra who had
been working for a local radio station run by a
Shiite political party that is the chief rival of
anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Jassim al-Batat, 38, worked for the local al-Nakhil
radio station based in Basra.
Al-Nakhil radio is run by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi
Council. Its leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim has sided
with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
since Iraqi security forces launched a crackdown on
al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in Basra a month ago.
Journalists have frequently been targeted or caught
up in attacks in Iraq. More than 175 journalists and
media support workers have been killed since the
U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to the New
York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Reporters without Borders, the Paris-based advocacy
group, said Friday that 211 media assistants and
journalists, including al-Batat, have been killed
since the invasion began.
The fate of another 14 journalists and assistants
who were kidnapped is not known, the group said.
Hundreds of Iraqi journalists also have been forced
into exile since the war started five years ago,
Reporters Without Borders said in a report in March.
Most fled to Jordan or Syria after receiving threats
or surviving murder attempts.
That report found that Iraqi journalists face the
unique danger of being targeted by multiple groups
including Sunni and Shiite militias, al-Qaida in
Iraq, the police and U.S.-led forces.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, AP
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