Bomb takes death toll of journalists in Iraq war to 126

[cal04]

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bomb-takes-death-toll-of-journalists-in-iraq-war-to-126-776188.html

Iraq confirmed its reputation as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists this week when a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi television cameraman, Alaa Abdul-Karim al-Fartoosi, the first journalist to be killed in Iraq this year and the 126th since the start of the war.

(snip)
The great majority of the journalists killed – 104 out of the total – were Iraqi. Thirteen were European and two were American. In addition, 49 media support workers have also been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.

(snip)
Often journalists have been killed for the same reasons that tens of thousands of Iraqis die, but their deaths receive a little more notice. For instance, Khaled Fayyad Obaid al Hamdani was shot dead by a US military patrol when he was driving to work, according to the Nahrain television station for which he worked. He was driving fast to avoid kidnappers but the US soldiers evidently suspected him of being a suicide bomber and shot him. A US military spokesman said he had no record of the shooting.

(snip)
Iraqi journalists these days do much of the reporting for Western media organisations, because of the danger to any foreigner appearing in public.

Some foreign media have become prisoners of their own Western security companies and are mainly confined to their offices. This has kept casualties among Western journalists down but means that much of the war is unreported.