Iraqi Times Reporter Killed in Baghdad
The New York Times is reporting that 23-year-old Khalid Hassan, an Iraqi interpreter and reporter who worked for the paper, was killed today in Baghdad:
Mr. Hassan was shot in the Saidiya district of south central Baghdad while driving to work under circumstances that remain unclear, Mr. Burns said. He had called the bureau earlier and said his normal route to the office had been blocked by a security checkpoint.
“I’m trying to find another way,” he told the bureau staff.
About a half an hour later he called his mother, with whom he lived, telling her, “I’ve been shot.”
His family later called the bureau to report that he had been killed.
He is the second Times journalist to be killed in Iraq since the invasion: Times stringer Fakher Haider, who worked in Basra, was killed in September 2005.
The Times notes that according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over 100 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
The Associated Press notes:
Hassan's slaying came a day after two Iraqi staffers of the London-based Reuters news agency - a photographer and a driver - were killed by clashes between U.S. forces and Shiite mililtiamen in east Baghdad.
