Turkmen journalist killed in Kerkuk

Gunmen Shoot Ethnic Turkmen Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Outside his Home

By Issam Tareq Kerkuk,
May 29, (VOI) –
Unidentified gunmen killed the editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper published in Kerkuk in front of his house in the predominantly-Turkoman neighborhood of al-Musalla, northern Kerkuk, a police source said."Mahmoud Hassib al-Qassab, the editor of al-Hawadeth weekly, was an ethnic Turkoman and the fourth journalist to be killed in Kerkuk this month," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Qassab was also the leader of the Movement to Rescue Turkomans.

Al-Hawadeth was the first newspaper published in Kerkuk in 1962.
It stopped for a while but Qassab had it re-issued after 2003.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said at least 104 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press.

About four in five journalist deaths there have been Iraqis.