Journalist shot dead in Iraq

A Kurdish television journalist has been shot and killed in the ethnically divided oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Kirkuk has been on edge since the 30 January elections

Shamal Abd Allah Assad, who worked for the local station of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, was shot dead on Friday by armed men in a car park, said police Colonel Ad al-Zain al-Abidin Ibrahim.

  

Kirkuk, home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, has been on edge since the 30 January elections that saw Kurds move closer to their goal of annexing the city to Kurdistan.

  

Two journalists were shot and killed in the northern city of Mosul in March and February. One of them was a reporter with a local Kurdish television station.

  

At least 50 journalists and other media workers have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq two years ago.

 

Car bomb

 

A car bomb targeting a convoy of Iraqi national guards exploded in al-Amiriya neighbourhood west of Baghdad on Friday, Aljazeera learned. No casualties were reported.

 

In the Khan Dhari area near the Abu Ghraib neighbourhood, a roadside bomb destroyed a US Humvee and wounded several US soldiers in it, Aljazeera learned.  

 

Two US marines were killed in separate attacks on Wednesday and Thursday, the US military revealed on Friday.

 

One marine, assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, died on Wednesday when a mortar round landed inside a military base at Camp Hit in western Iraq, the military said.

 

The second marine, assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed on Thursday by anti-US fighters while conducting combat operations in Ramadi.

 

The names of both were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.  

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies