AP TV Photojournalist Shot Dead In Iraq

 

(December 12, 2006) - The Associated Press reports that one of their television cameramen, Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, 35, was shot dead today by insurgents while covering a clash in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The report says Lutfallah was waiting while his car was being repaired mid-morning Tuesday when police and insurgents clashed nearby. When he rushed to cover the fight with his camera, the insurgents saw him filming the fight and and approached him and shot him to death.

AP says Lutfallah had worked for them as a television photojournalist since 2005, and that he is survived by a wife, Alyaa Abdul-Karim Salim, a small son, Yusof, and an infant daughter, Rafa.

Tom Curley, AP's president and CEO, today said "Our hearts go out to Aswan's family and his Iraqi AP colleagues. The murder of yet another journalist underscores the particular dangers of this conflict and the sacrifices of those committed to reporting this story."

This is the second AP television photographer and the third AP employee to be killed in Iraq. Saleh Ibrahim was killed April 23, 2005, in an explosion in Mosul. Ismail Taher Mohsin, a driver, was ambushed and killed by gunmen in Baghdad in 2004.

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