Region | Iraq

Iraqi journalist shot dead in botched kidnapping

An Iraqi reporter was shot dead by unknown gunmen in northern Mosul on Sunday, police said.

  • Agencies
  • Published: 15:32 May 4, 2008
  • Gulf News

  • A woman grieves over the body of her son who was killed in a bomb attack in Baquba on Sunday. In Mosul, gunmen shot dead an Iraqi journalist.
  • Image Credit: Reuters

Baghdad: Gunmen killed a journalist during a botched kidnapping attempt on Sunday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police and family said.

Sarwa Abdul-Wahab, 36, worked as a lawyer defending the rights of journalists and as a reporter for the 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 Mohammad, 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 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, said Brig Gen Khalid Abdul-Sattar of the police. He is the security spokesman for Nineveh province.

She was also a member of an association defending journalists' rights which was formed in 2003, according to Yasir Al Hamadani, director of the Mosul branch.

"Besides her work as a journalist, she was an activist working with non-governmental organisations, as well as being a lawyer," Al Hamadani said.

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 US-led invasion in 2003, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

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