[NYTr] Wash. Post Correspondent Killed in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via USA Daily - Oct 14, 2007
http://www.usadaily.com/article.cfm?articleID=123891

Wash. Post Correspondent Killed in Iraq

A correspondent for The Washington Post was fatally shot Sunday while
on assignment in Baghdad, the newspaper said.

Salih Saif Aldin, 32, an Iraqi who sometimes wrote under the name Salih
Dehema for security reasons, was killed while reporting on the violence
in the neighborhood of Sadiyah, according to a statement from the
newspaper.

The newspaper reported on its Web site Sunday that Aldin's wounds
appeared to indicate he was shot at close range. His body was later
found on the street, covered with newspapers.

He was the first reporter for the newspaper to be killed during the
Iraq war, the newspaper said.

Sadiyah is a formerly religiously mixed neighborhood in southwestern
Baghdad that is now dominated by Shiites after most Sunnis were driven
out by sectarian violence.

Aldin began working for the newspaper in early 2004 as a stringer in
his hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, and later moved to
the capital, the newspaper said.

'Courageous beyond imagination, Salih was determined to unveil the
truth,' said Sudarsan Raghavan, The Post's Baghdad bureau chief. 'He
was instrumental to The Post's coverage of Iraq.'

Iraqi journalists working for local or international media frequently
come under threats from insurgents because of their reporting or their
affiliation with Western organizations.

Excluding Aldin's death, at least 118 journalists and 41 media support
workers have been killed in Iraq since the war started in March 2003,
according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.