Gunmen ambushed five guards for the Tikrit-based weekly Al-Watan on the road between Kirkuk and Al-Riyadh in Iraq’s northern At-Tamim province on the evening of October 14, according to CPJ sources and news reports. A local journalist identified the three slain guards as Ziad Tarek al-Dibo, Jassem Mohammad Nofan, and Khaled Mohammad Nofan, and the two injured as Alal al-Ghariri and Mohammad Shaker al-Samraee.
Al-Watan‘s deputy chief editor, Waqas al-Dowaini, told the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a local press freedom organization, that the guards were returning to Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, after escorting the paper’s chairman, Hatem Mawloud Mokhles, to Arbil. The gunmen attacked near Houd 18 village, southwest of Kirkuk. Al-Dowaini told the observatory that the victims were employed as guards for the paper and as personal guards for Mokhles, secretary-general of the Iraqi National Movement political party.