AP News, October 15th, 2007
A second Iraqi journalist in as many days was killed Monday in an ambush north of Baghdad that left his two security guards wounded, according to police and relatives.
Dhi Abdul-Razak al-Dibo, a 32-year-old freelance reporter, was driving his BMW with his guards near Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, Kirkuk police spokesman Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said.
Al-Dibo's family said he lived in Kirkuk and contributed stories to at least two weekly newspapers in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. The relatives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, said al-Dibo is survived by his wife.
The attack occurred a day after The Washington Post said one of its Iraqi correspondents was shot to death while on assignment in Baghdad.
Salih Saif Aldin, 32, an Iraqi who sometimes wrote under the name Salih Dehema for security reasons, was killed Sunday while reporting on the violence in the neighborhood of Sadiyah, according to a statement from the newspaper.
The Washington Post reported Aldin died from a single shot to the forehead and his body was covered with newspapers.
Sadiyah is a formerly religiously mixed neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad that is now dominated by Shiites after most Sunnis were driven out by sectarian violence.
Aldin began working for the newspaper in early 2004 as a stringer in his hometown of Tikrit and later moved to the capital, the newspaper said.
Iraqi journalists working for local or international media frequently come under threats from insurgents because of their reporting or their affiliation with Western organizations.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, a journalist watchdog group, said it was "appalled by the murders" and called on Iraqi authorities to investigate. The organization said at least 151 journalists and 54 media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the war started in March 2003.
