Media worker killed in western Iraq

A technician with an Iraqi satellite channel was killed on Saturday and a journalist wounded as they covered operations against ISIS in western Iraq, their employer said.

Both worked for Al Ahad TV, a channel affiliated with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the most powerful Shiite militias in Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary umbrella.

The pair were hit by mortar fire in Jazirat al-Khaldiyeh in the western province of Anbar.

“Our TV team came under mortar fire in Jazirat al-Khaldiyeh as they were covering the battle,” Raida al-Ogaily, head of public relations at Al-Ahad, told AFP.

“Broadcast technician Ali Ghani was killed and the correspondent, Hussein al-Fares, was wounded,” she said.

The area where the incident occurred lies between provincial capital Ramadi and Fallujah, both of which have been retaken from the militants by security forces.

Pockets of ISIS fighters remain in the area, however, and Jazirat al-Khaldiyeh commands access to desert routes the militant group has been using to move across the country.

A journalist with Al-Ghadeer, the channel run by the Badr organization whose armed group is another key component of the Hashed al-Shaabi forces fighting alongside government forces, was killed south of the city of Mosul last month.

A reporter with Kurdistan TV was killed on August 14 when mortar fire struck the Peshmerga convoy he was travelling in during an operation east of Mosul.

A day earlier, a reporter working for a news agency that supports the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was murdered after being kidnapped in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, according to press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders.