Two Iraqi journalists killed in 24 hours (1st Lead)

Oct 15, 2007, 9:09 GMT

Baghdad - Two Iraqi reporters including a correspondent for the Washington Post were killed and two others were wounded in separate attacks ing Baghdad and Kirkuk in the past 24 hours, sources said Monday.

An armed group opened fire at dawn on Monday on two cars carrying Iraqi journalists on a road in south-west Kirkuk province, killing one and injuring two, a security source said.

The victims worked for the newspaper Salahaddin, which is funded by US forces in Iraq and has been published since 2005.

Meanwhile Iraqi reporter for The Washington Post Salih Saif Aldin, 32, was killed Sunday while covering a story about violence between Shiite militia members and Sunni militants in the volatile south-western Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadiyah, the paper said Monday.

It said it was alerted about his death when a man used Saif Aldin's mobile phone to call one of the reporter's colleagues.

Sadiyah residents said Saif Aldin, who had worked for the Post for three and a half years, was killed while taking photographs of a street where several homes had been burned in recent fighting.

'The death of Salih Saif Aldin in the service of our readers is a tragedy for everyone at The Washington Post,' the newspaper's executive editor Leonard Downie Jr said. 'He was a brave and valuable reporter who contributed much to our coverage of Iraq.'

Police and residents offered conflicting reports about who might be responsible for killing the divorced father of a 6-year-old girl, with both Shiite and Sunni militants being blamed, the Post said.

Several journalists are killed every month in Iraq, mostly Iraqis working for both local, national and international media.