Gunmen kill third Iraqi journalist in one week

BAGHDAD, Mar 14 (Reuters) Gunmen assassinated the editor of an Iraqi weekly near his home in Baghdad, police and colleagues said today, in the third killing of an Iraqi journalist in a week.

Hours before he was gunned down yesterday evening, Muhsin Khudhair, editor of news magazine Alef Ba, had attended a meeting of the Iraqi Journalists Union in which they urged all sides to recognise the neutrality of journalists in Iraq.

''Iraqi journalists now have become a target because they are the only ones who are working in the field after the withdrawal of Arab and other foreign journalists,'' Shihab al-Timimi, head of the journalists union, said yesterday after the meeting.

On Saturday, gunmen killed Amjad Hameed, a senior editor for Iraqi state television in an attack claimed by al Qaeda. His assassination drew wide condemnation and renewed calls for journalists to be allowed to carry firearms for protection.

Last week, Munsuf Abdallah al-Khalidi, a presenter on the Baghdad Television channel run by Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political party, was shot dead today.

More than 70 foreign and Iraqi journalists have been reported killed since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

REUTERS SI BD1620