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A TV presenter has been killed by a car bomb in Iraq. Kamiran Salaheddin was killed at around 9pm on Monday (2 April) night, after a bomb placed under his car exploded. Salaheddin presented Al-Iraq w-al Hadath (Iraq and Events), a news and current affairs programme on Salahaddin TV, where he had been employed since 2005. The journalist was also the head of the local journalists’ union in Tikrit. Salaheddin is the first journalist to be killed in Iraq this year.
Well known journalist Hadia Al-Mahdi was found dead at his home in Baghdad on 7 September. The body of Al-Mahdi was found in his home in the Al-Karada district at around 7pm. He had been shot twice in the head. It is believed that his murder was politically motivated. Madhi hosted a popular talk show called “To whoever listens” on Radio Demozy where he tackled a wide range of subjects including the Iraqi educational system and corruption. Mahdi’s murder comes almost one month after the Iraqi parliament adopted a law on the protection of journalists on 9 August.
Afaq.tv cameraman, Salem Alwan Al-Gharabi, was killed in a suicide bomb attack in southern Iraq on Tuesday. At least 27 people were killed in the double car bomb attack outside a government compound in Diwaniya, a city 275 km south of Baghdad. Al-Gharabi had gone to cover the regional council’s weekly meeting when he was killed in the blast.
The offices of Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO), an Iraqi media watchdog, were raided by around 30 armed men on Wednesday. The men took away computers, cameras, video cameras, bulletproof jackets and archives from the office. The director of JFO blamed the government for the attack: “The government is behind this attack. The JFO is fighting for media freedom to become a reality in Iraq and, as such, clearly poses a threat to the authorities”.