Gunmen kill Iraqi media workers

BAGHDAD -- The bureau chief of an Iraqi daily newspaper and a woman working for Iraq's state-run television were shot and killed by assailants in separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, authorities said yesterday.

The deaths raised the number of journalists and media workers killed in the country to at least three over the past four days.

Firas al-Maadhidi, who headed the Mosul bureau of al-Safir newspaper, was killed by unknown assailants Tuesday night while on his way home in the city, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, said Ninevah province police Brigadier General Saeed Ahmed al-Jibouri.

Yesterday gunmen in Mosul killed Ahlam Youssef, an engineer who worked for al-Iraqiya television, and her husband, said Bassem al-Fadli, a manager at the station's headquarters in Baghdad. Their child, who was with them in their car at the time, was seriously wounded.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the attacks.

''Journalists continue to be preferred targets in Iraq," the media advocacy group said in a statement. ''We reiterate our requests to the Iraqi authorities and coalition forces to carry out rapid and thorough investigations."

On Sunday night an Iraqi reporter working for The New York Times was shot and killed in Basra, 340 miles south of Baghdad. Authorities said Fakher Haider, 38, was found dead Monday morning.