Attacks on Journalists Continue in Baghdad

Gunmen killed a radio journalist and kidnapped a television reporter, Iraqi police said Saturday, continuing a spate of attacks that has killed 14 media employees in recent weeks.

Hussam Ahmed, a correspondent for the independent TV station Nahrain, was forced from his car at gunpoint Saturday, police said. The gunmen took him away in another car. There has been no communication from the kidnappers.

Police also reported that another journalist, announcer Raid Qais of Voice of Iraq radio, was shot while driving to work in the Dora neighborhood of south Baghdad on Friday. Qais died instantly, police said.

Three other journalists recently have been kidnapped or killed in roadside attacks, and 11 employees of a television station were killed by gunmen Thursday. A convoy of armed men, some wearing police uniforms, invaded the Al Shaabiya satellite television station and opened fire at executives, technicians and guards. General manager Abdul Raheem Nasrallah was among those killed.

The attacks are raising concern that the groups responsible for Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting are turning their attention to the news media.

“They’re trying to hide the reality of the crimes they are committing in Iraq by killing the individuals who are transmitting that reality to the whole world,” said Ziad Ajili, head of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, an Iraqi free-speech watchdog group.

The other journalists killed recently included reporter Azad Mohammed of the Dar al Salam radio station, whose body lay in the morgue Wednesday. Mohammed, 29, was kidnapped Oct. 3 as he left his house in the Shaab neighborhood of northeast Baghdad.

On Thursday, radio announcer Mohammed Abdul Rahman, 55, of Dijla Radio was found dead. He was kidnapped in mid-September in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour, where he had moved after receiving threats.

Ali Kareem, editor of a weekly newspaper, was grabbed from his car Monday on the way to work in east Baghdad, the Voice of Iraq reported. Iraq’s journalism syndicate received a $50,000 ransom demand for Kareem’s release.

Although most of Iraq’s media outlets have some political or tribal affiliation, most of the recent victims worked for organizations that are considered relatively independent.

Ajili said some attacks on journalists might involve political or tribal motives, but “the first thing is because they are journalists.”

“I think there is a campaign against journalism,” said Saif Qaissi, a reporter for a foreign news agency who was a friend of Qais, the slain announcer. “It has been escalating for four months.”

Reporters covering public affairs in Iraq face a high-stakes dilemma, Qaissi said. If they praise the government, anti-government groups are likely to accuse them of being tied to a group in power. If they criticize, they can be accused of trying to destabilize the country.

“They don’t realize that the journalist has to write both the failures and the successes,” he said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, reported Friday that 85 journalists and 35 media support workers had been killed in Iraq since March 2003, making the war there the deadliest conflict for the media in the last 25 years.

On Saturday, authorities reported finding 18 bodies in Baghdad and seven more in Duluiya, north of the capital, where 14 other bodies had been found Friday. Some of the victims showed signs of torture.

A bomb killed one person and injured two in east Baghdad.

An attack on an Iraqi army convoy outside the northern city of Kirkuk left one soldier dead and two wounded.

The Associated Press reported that gunmen killed six adults and two young girls in an attack Friday on a Shiite family picking vegetables in fields south of the capital. Interior Ministry officials could not immediately confirm the report.

U.S. officials reported the combat deaths of two American military personnel. A Marine died Saturday of injuries sustained in an enemy attack in Al Anbar province. A soldier died Friday of wounds received when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad.

The Army also reported that a base in southwest Baghdad that was rocked by a spectacular series of explosions set off by a mortar round that hit an ammunition dump Wednesday had been restored to normal operations in 24 hours.

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Times special correspondents in Baghdad and Kirkuk contributed to this report.