Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Gunmen killed an Iraqi journalist working for A US-Funded television network in Basra and assassinated a senior government official in Baghdad on Wednesday in the latest attacks following the January 30 election.
Police in Basra, 550 km southeast of Baghdad, said Alhurra correspondent Abdul-Hussein Khazal had been shot dead at his home in the mainly Shi’ite city. Alhurra is a Virginia-based satellite news network set up with US funding to compete with Arabic channels such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Alhurra said one of Khazal’s sons had also been killed. He was three years old.
Police in Baghdad said a director in the Ministry of Culture and Housing was assassinated on Wednesday evening when gunmen attacked his car.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told sailors on a destroyer off the French coast: ‘‘I wish I could assure you that everything was going to turnout well. But I can’t… I suspect that it will be a bumpy road, a tough road.’’
Iraq’s Electoral Commission said the announcement of a final vote tally, previously expected by Thursday, would be delayed while around 300 ballot boxes were re-examined. Partial results show an alliance of mainly Shi’ite Islamist parties is well in the lead, as expected. A coalition of Kurdish parties is second and a bloc led by Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is third. —Reuters
