Mourning Atwar Bahjat

Gunmen have shot a 30-year-old television journalist and two technicians from Dubai-based Al-Arabiya outside the troubled Iraqi city of Samarra.
Reporter Atwar Bahjat, cameraman Khaled Mahmud al-Falahi and soundman Adnan Khairallah were on the scene to try to cover the blowing up of a Shiite mosque when their van was stopped and the journalists taken away. Their bullet-ridden bodies were found a little later.
"The hand of treason in Iraq has silenced a media voice that was simply carrying out its professional mission," said a statement by the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya, according to Agence France-Presse.
The news service reported that a former colleague, Abdel Azim Mohammed, said, "She is a true professional and the first on the scene of an event. She went to Samarra, where many men refused to venture."
When will the world recognize that reporters are not the enemy?


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