Iraqi TV Executive Slain by Gunmen in Baghdad

Gunmen killed the director of Iraq’s state television channel and his driver Saturday, the second slaying this month of a figure who shapes broadcast news coverage of the country’s sectarian strife.

Amjad Hameed, 45, a former cameraman and programming executive who had run Al Iraqiya television since July, was shot several times in the face and chest after assailants cut off his car as he headed to work in central Baghdad. He died instantly, police said.

Al Iraqiya, indirectly controlled by the Shiite Muslim-led government, suspended regular programming and aired verses from the Koran after reporting the news of Hameed’s death. It showed footage of female colleagues as they wept over Hameed’s coffin and doctors as they struggled to revive his driver, Anwar Turky, who died after emergency surgery.

The slayings came four days after the shooting death of Munsuf Abdallah Khalidi, a news anchor on Baghdad Television, which is run by the country’s largest Sunni Arab party. That channel and Al Iraqiya give highly partisan, opposing slants to the bloodshed that pits Sunnis against Shiites.

Last month, a famous war correspondent for the Dubai-based Al Arabiya channel, Atwar Bahjat, was shot to death along with her cameraman and engineer while covering the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. The attack on the mosque triggered a weeklong spike in violence that left hundreds dead across the nation.

The Iraqi Journalists Syndicate, reacting to Saturday’s attack, announced that it would ask the interior minister to grant licenses allowing journalists to carry firearms for self-defense. More than 70 foreign and Iraqi journalists have been listed as killed since U.S. forces toppled President Saddam Hussein three years ago. Al Iraqiya says 38 of its employees, including non-journalistic staff, have died in the violence.

Most attacks on Al Iraqiya’s employees are believed to be the work of Sunni-led insurgents. “Terrorists want to muffle the media to stop the truth from reaching the people,” Mofeed Jazaeri, Iraq’s former culture minister, said.

Waffa Abbas, a spokesman for Al Iraqiya, said Hameed considered leaving the channel last fall after receiving death threats. He moved to a different neighborhood but kept his job, Abbas said.

Print journalists also have received death threats. “They come by e-mail or anonymous calls, or even text messages on their mobile phones,” said Basim al-Sheik, a newspaper editor who heads the National Council of Iraqi Journalism and received such a threat a week ago. “Our lives are in the wind.”

Authorities reported at least four other shooting deaths Saturday, including that of a human rights activist in Hawija, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, and a police lieutenant colonel in the capital. One U.S. soldier was wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the American military said.

Meanwhile, Sunni and Shiite political leaders met for the first time since the Samarra bombing to resume talks on forming a new government. The negotiations have moved slowly since Dec. 15 elections produced a divided parliament, with Shiites falling short of a majority.

*

Times staff writers Shamil Aziz, Zainab Hussein and Raheem Salman contributed to this report.