Deathtrap Iraq

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, August 9, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes reports that the U.S. military arrested four Iraqi men in the kidnapping of American freelance journalist Jill Carroll in Baghdad today. "In a time of increasing dangers to journalists in Iraq, it is certainly welcome news that these four individuals have been detained and will be held accountable for the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two Iraqi journalists have been killed in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said Tuesday. Mohammed Abbas Hamad, 28, a journalist for the Shiite-owned newspaper Al-Bayinnah Al-Jadida, was shot by gunmen at he left his home Monday in the Adil section of western Baghdad, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said. Late Monday, police found the bullet-riddled body of freelance journalist...

Several journalists in Kirkuk have accused American and Iraqi security forces of assaulting them and their crews as they tried to report on the worsening security situation in the northern city. In at least six separate incidents since June, Iraqi reporters said they had been physically beaten, had their equipment confiscated and been falsely accused of "terrorism". Senior US and Iraqi military...

NAJAF, Iraq - The Baghdad correspondent of the Iranian government-run Al-Alam television station was assassinated in the western part of Baghdad, one of his colleagues said Tuesday. Adil al-Mansuri, an Iraqi who was in his 20s, was driving his car after dropping his wife at her family's home in Amiriyah when gunmen stopped him Monday and shot him dead, said Aysar al-Yasiri, the network's...

AMMAN, Jordan, July 11 (UPI) -- The family of a Jordanian journalist killed in U.S. shelling of Baghdad a day before it fell in April 2003 will sue the White House and the Pentagon. The widow and daughter of the Qatari al-Jazeera television correspondent Tarek Ayyoub will file a lawsuit through the American judiciary on charges that the shelling of the news agency's offices in Baghdad was pre...

Iraq is the deadliest war on record for news people. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 74 journalists have been killed there since the bombing of Baghdad began in 2003. And there have been plenty of near-misses. NBC's David Bloom died of a pulmonary embolism in the early weeks of the war while riding in a tank. ABC's Bob Woodruff was seriously injured last January, and CBS's...

THE voice on the telephone was that of a trusted contact whose advice on security in Iraq has often been a source of reassurance. But the message he passed on last Wednesday and the urgency of his tone could hardly have been more alarming: my name had been placed on a hit list by one of the groups whose death threats have spread fear through countless communities in this stricken country. “A...

BAGHDAD, June 28 (Reuters) - Iraq on Wednesday accused al Qaeda militants of killing a correspondent for the al Arabiya satellite channel in February. Atwar Bahjat disappeared with her cameraman Khaled Al Falahi and soundman Adnan Khairallah near Samarra as she reported on a bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the town on Feb. 22. Their bodies were found the following morning. Iraq's National Security...

British broadcasters are making a series of fictionalised accounts of the Iraq war that will include a controversial Channel 4 dramatisation of soldiers abusing prisoners. Screenwriter Tony Marchant's new drama, The Mark of Cain, which began filming this month in Tunisia, draws on stories such as that of Fusilier Gary Bartlam, who was arrested in 2003 after trying to develop a roll of film that...

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 23 (IPS) - If one were to ask Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena why she chose to report from Afghanistan, Algeria, Somalia and Iraq prior to February 2005, despite the many perils that face reporters in war zones and areas of conflict, her response would probably be similar to the one she gave to journalist Amy Goodman of the radio news show Democracy Now!. "I can't go only...