Iraq

Mohamed Baidawi, Radio Free Iraq’s Baghdad bureau chief, was shot dead in Baghdad on March 22, while Radio Babel journalist Raji Hamadallah was badly injured in a shooting attack on March 24 in Babil province, according to Reporters Without Borders. Baidawi was trying to enter the high security “Green Zone” where the Radio Free Iraq’s office is located when he got into an argument at a...

Two employees of state-owned Al-Iraqiya TV, Muthanna Abdel Hussein and Khaled Abdel Thamer, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a police checkpoint at Hala, 70 km south of Baghdad, March 11 morning. “We offer our condolences to the friends and families of these two media workers and we condemn this attack with the utmost energy,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Journalists are among the...

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the February 20 bomb attack on the downtown Baghdad headquarters of the Al-Sabah Al-Jadid newspaper, five days after it published a much criticised cartoon of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The explosion caused a great deal of damage but no injuries. The offending cartoon illustrated an article in the newspaper’s February 6 issue, which was...

An Iraqi journalist was killed by a roadside bomb in Anbar province on Monday, according to news reports. Firas Mohammed Attiyah, a correspondent, had been reporting on ongoing clashes in the province for the local Fallujah TV station, the reports said. "The situation for journalists in Iraq has deteriorated very sharply in recent months," said CPJ's Middle East and North Africa Coordinator Sherif...

Many journalists have been the target of deliberate physical attacks in the past week as police officers and members of the security forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two main parties that form the government in Iraqi Kurdistan, looked on without intervening. In one incident, reporters were attacked by gunmen in civilian dress while covering a fire in a building near the...

Iraqi journalists are now often sued by politicians and public figures and, at the same time, are often the targets of physical attacks which, in many cases are carried out by members of the security forces, including the bodyguards of leading politicians. “These practices, which are designed to intimidate journalists and censor the media, constitute serious violations of freedom of expression and...

Afaq TV cameraman Salem Alwan Al-Gharabi killed in a double suicide bombing in the southern city of Diwaniya June 21. His death brought the number of media personnel killed in Iraq since the start of the year to six, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). According to a preliminary report by the Iraqi security services, 20 people were killed and 30 were...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has expressed shock at the spate of arbitrary arrests in Iraqi Kurdistan as it prepares to celebrate the 113th anniversary of the creation of the first Kurdish news media on Friday. Media freedom and security, which seemed better in Kurdistan than in neighbouring regions during the darkest years of the war in Iraq, have worsened a...

Threats and acts of intimidation against journalists are continuing in Iraqi Kurdistan as a wave of protests enters its 55th day in the autonomous region. “This situation is worrying,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “Not a day goes by without a journalist being arrested, threatened or harassed. We reiterate our 25 March appeal to Iraqi Kurdistan’s authorities...

Taha Al-Alawi, the head of satellite television station Al-Masar TV, was killed in the Werij district of southern Baghdad on Friday. Gunmen shot at the car in which he was travelling. Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) urged Iraqi authorities to carry out a proper investigation into this killing in order to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Impunity for...