A Kurdish journalist gunned down in the northern city of Kirkuk was the 136th reporter killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq five years ago, a New York-based journalists' group said today.
Colonel Taha al-Din of Kirkuk police said Diyar Abbas Ahmed, a journalist with Iraq Eye media, was assassinated yesterday in the city centre.
Ethnic and religious tensions have risen in the city, which has been the site of a tense standoff between Arabs and Kurds.
Kurds want to incorporate Kirkuk into their semi-autonomous region in the north. Iraq's government has been stalled for months over the future status of the oil-rich city.
The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Iraqi authorities to track down Ahmed's killers and bring them to justice. It said four journalists have been killed in the Kirkuk area since 2003.
According to its website, Iraq Eye provides news, market research, public relations and other services.
Lateef Fatih Faraj, head of Kirkuk's journalist union, said Ahmed was 28 and unmarried, and worked with several media stations including Iraqiya TV and a television station sponsored by a Kurdish political party.
Ahmed was leaving an art centre in Kirkuk with a friend when three gunmen stopped them, Faraj said. The friend was not harmed.
Faraj said the killers were targeting Ahmed because of his writing. More assassinations of journalists will occur, he added, "if no protection is given to them."
