MORE TV REPORTERS GUNNED DOWN IN IRAQ

Insurgent gunmen in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday shot and killed two TV reporters, Safah Abdul Hameed (aka Safa al-Din Abdel Hamid) and Safaa al-Khaiyatt, as they were leaving for work at the al-Mosuliyah satellite TV station. (The reports were somewhat confusing and may have referred to a single incident involving a reporter who may have used two identities. If there were in fact two separate shootings, it was not clear from the reports whether the same gunmen were responsible for both.) On Tuesday, Riyad Assariyeh, an anchor for the Pentagon-funded Iraqiya TV, was killed as he stepped outside his home in Baghdad. The deaths coincided with the release of a report, The Iraq War: A Heavy Death Toll for the Media, by the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) claiming that the Iraq war has been “the most lethal for journalists since World War II.” RSF tallied 230 cases of journalists and media staff killed in Iraq since 2003 — “more than those killed during 20 years of the Vietnam War.”