KIRKUK / Aswat al-Iraq: Unidentified gunmen shot down a journalist in the city of Kirkuk on Friday evening, a security official said. “The gunmen opened fire at journalist Dayyar Abbas off the Kirkuk Association of Artists in central Kirkuk, leaving him severely wounded. He died on his way to the hospital,” Brig. Sarhad Qader, the Kirkuk districts’ police chief, told Aswat al-Iraq.“Abbas was a correspondent for al-Ain news agency in Kirkuk,” said Qader, adding the incident is being investigated. Al-Ain is an independent Iraq media corporation.
Several months ago, unidentified gunmen had shot down Kurdish journalist Soran Mama Hama in front of his house in Kirkuk. Hama was in charge of the Kirkuk office of the of Lafin, an independent Kurdish-language political magazine.