Mohsin, a driver working for The Associated Press in Iraq, was killed when
gunmen opened fire on his car near his home in the Ghazaliyya neighborhood of
Baghdad. Mohsin had been en route to Baghdad’s Umm al-Qura mosque while on
assignment for the AP.
It was unclear who the gunmen were or why they carried out the attack. The AP
reported that nothing was stolen from Mohsin’s body, but said that when the
driver’s relatives and colleagues waited for police at the scene of the crime “a
group of armed men in a van pulled up and asked if the car’s driver was dead and
then drove off.”
Mohsin had not received threats or warnings, according to his relatives, but
neighbors had observed a suspicious car circling around Mohsin’s house the night
before the incident, the AP reported.
Police told the AP that two translators and two drivers who were believed to
have worked for Americans had been shot dead in the same neighborhood.
In the days leading up to his death, Mohsin, had gone several times to the
Umm al-Qura mosque, where a group of Muslim clerics with reputed links to
insurgents, had given a press conference regarding the fate of two French
journalists who were taken hostage, according to the AP.