Bodies of three Iraqi journalists discovered

THE bodies of three Iraqi journalists, including a correspondent for Al-Arabiya television, were found yesterday near Samarra, police and the network said.

Al-Arabiya’s Atwar Bahjat and two colleagues from a local media company were covering Wednesday’s bombing of a Shi’ite shrine. Their employers lost contact with them that night.

The bullet-riddled bodies of Ms Bahjat, engineer Adnan Khairullah and cameraman Khalid Mahmoud were found yesterday near their vehicle, cameras and satellite dish on the outskirts of the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, police Captain Laith Muhammad said.

Ms Bahjat was the seventh woman journalist killed since the start of the war.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s office called the killings “a criminal and cowardly act” in a statement that praised Ms Bahjat and her colleagues as professional journalists who “never stopped defending the truth.”

The journalists had been reporting live on Wednesday from the edge of Samarra, which was sealed off by security forces after the explosion at the Askariya shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque.

The team was preparing to return to Kirkuk when two gunmen pulled up in pick-up truck, shooting in the air and shouting “We want the correspondent!” according to a cameraman who evaded capture, Al-Arabiya reported.

The three bodies were found about six miles northeast of Samarra.

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders expressed horror at the killings.

“We will never stop repeating that journalists are neutral and vital observers,” the group said.

“They are neither combatants nor targets to be shot down. Their work must be protected and respected, whatever their nationality and regardless of which media they work for.”

Eighty-two journalists and media company employees have been killed since the start of the war in March 2003, according to the group.

Al-Arabiya has had three other journalists killed since the start of the war.