(KUNA) -- - Three armed militants have murdered a reporter of a satellite television channel in Al-Aazameya in northern Baghdad, the Iraqi Press Freedom Watch said in a statement on Saturday. The independent press organization said Ahmed Al-Rasheed, 29 years, a former reporter of Addyar satellite channel and employed as a reporter by Al-Sharqia television channel recently, was shot dead by unknown militants late on Friday. The attack is part of recent escalating violence against reporters and media personnel, according to the organization that registered up to 155 murders of Iraqi journalists.
- Meanwhile, unknown gunners, riding an Opel car, shot dead three civilians and injured five others west Baghdad on Saturday, according to security sources. Earlier in the day, four Iraqi civilians were injured in two separate car bombings that targeted U.S. patrols in Mosul, north Iraq, said a police source.
- Also during the day, four Russian experts were slightly injured in a mortar attack in Basra, south Iraq, Saturday, according to Russian Itar-Tass News Agency. A mortar shell targeting a British military position in Basra, hit the working site of the Russian experts in Nagabiay thermoelectric station on outskirts of the city. Russia has evacuated most of its workers in Iraq since last June, when four of its diplomats were killed in Baghdad.
- Director of operation room of Mosul police headquarters Colonel Abdul-Karim Al-Gabouri told reporters the security authorities released Sheikh Saleh Hammudi, chief of Iraqi Muslim Scholars Society Saturday, after a one-day detention.
- A car bomb also exploded in Babel governorate, south Baghdad, killing two persons and wounding three others, a security source told KUNA on Saturday.
- Masked gunmen carrying automatic rifles and RPGs attacked a public market and a residential area in Al-Zaafarana, south Baghdad. The attackers exchanged fire with policemen in the area and injured several civilians, according to police sources.
- A U.S.-backed Iraqi special force broke into Sadr City Saturday and arrested a leader and two members of a group accused of perpetrating murder and abduction operations in the city. Four days ago, a siege around the district was lifted according to instructions by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki.
- The U.S. army said in a statement that its troops arrested eight persons including three bodyguards of Falluja governor, west Baghdad, on suspicion of supporting insurgents.
The wave of car bombings and mortar attacks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities came hours ahead of issuing court sentences against ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his advisers in Al-Dujail case.
The Kirkuk police operation room reported 2,293 terrorist operations in the city in the first ten months of 2006, including abductions, car bombings, explosions and mortar attacks. The attacks led to 1,602 casualties, including 112 deaths among Iraqi police and army troops, and 92 civilian deaths as well as 1398 injured, including 334 police and army troops and the rest were civilians, according to the local police statistics. |