Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Iraqi Turkmen Journalist Killed In Kirkuk



Gunmen Shoot Ethnic Turkoman Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Outside his Home
05/29/2007 07:02 AM ET
By Issam Tareq Kirkuk, May 29, (VOI) – Unidentified gunmen killed the editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper published in Kirkuk in front of his house in the predominantly-Turkoman neighborhood of al-Musalla, northern Kirkuk, a police source said."Mahmoud Hassib al-Qassab, the editor of al-Hawadeth weekly, was an ethnic Turkoman and the fourth journalist to be killed in Kirkuk this month," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).Qassab was also the leader of the Movement to Rescue Turkomans. Al-Hawadeth was the first newspaper published in Kirkuk in 1962. It stopped for a while but Qassab had it re-issued after 2003.The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said at least 104 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press. About four in five journalist deaths there have been Iraqis.