Gunmen dragged a woman freelance journalist from a taxi in Iraq's northern restive city of Mosul on Sunday and killed her in broad daylight, a local police officer told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Tharwat Abdul-Wahab, 30, was on her way to work when a group of gunmen pulled her out of the vehicle and shot her in the head in eastern Mosul's Al-Baqar neighbourhood, the policeman said on condition of anonymity.
Mosul, one of the most dangerous cities in the country, has seen a number of local journalists killed since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Many media workers in Mosul—which the US and Iraqi officials claim to be the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda militants—do not reveal their profession for fear of being killed or kidnapped.
Most of the Iraqi journalists killed have been targeted by insurgent groups or militias angered by their coverage or ideologically opposed to their employers. Others have died in crossfire.
One senior journalist killed recently was Shihab al-Timimi, head of the Journalists Freedom Observatory (JFO), the leading association of local media workers in Iraq. He was gunned down in February in Baghdad. The JFO also confirmed Abdul-Wahib's death in Mosul on Sunday.
On Friday, it said that at least 37 Iraqi employees of media networks had been killed over the past year, and 235 overall since the invasion of March 2003, making Iraq the world's most dangerous place for journalists.
