BAGHDAD - The deaths of three more Iraqi journalists were reported on Wednesday, bringing the monthly total to nine and equalling the worst month on record for reporters in the Iraq war.Abdul Rahman al-Isawi, a reporter for the independent National Iraqi News Agency (NINA), was taken by gunmen from his home in the village of Amiriyat al-Falluja, 50 km (35 miles) west of Baghdad, on Monday night, NINA and family members said. “Gunmen entered his house and dragged him with his father and brother to a nearby orchard, where they shot them,” Isawi’s cousin, Mohammed Hussein, told Reuters. Another five family members were killed in clashes with the unidentified gunmen, family members said. Isawi was 31.
Nazar Abdul Wahid, a reporter for the Aswat al-Iraq news agency and New Sabah newspaper, was gunned down in Amara, 365 km (230 miles) south of Baghdad, on Wednesday, said Aswat al-Iraq’s Basra bureau chief Muhannad al-Saadi. “He was standing outside a hotel with four other journalists when three gunmen in a car opened fire and killed him,” Saadi said. Wahid, 38, was a father of three, he said.
Gunmen also killed Mahmoud Hakim Mustafa, editor-in-chief of Hawadith weekly newspaper, near his home in Kirkuk in northern Iraq on Monday, police said.