Killed in Baghdad

Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi, Special Correspondent with the excellent Alive in Baghdad, was shot and killed in his home in Habibya, part of the Sadr city, on December 14th. The Alive in Baghdad blog has more,

On Friday the 14th at 11:30pm Baghdad time, Iraqi National Guard forces raided the street where Ali’s house is, one of the neighbors heard a gun firing after 15 minutes from the arrival of the Iraqi National Guard convoy to the street, the force left at 3:00am… The morgue report says that Ali took 31 bullets between the chest and the head and died immediately. He will be missed and remembered. His two brothers were killed in the Firdos Square bombing in 2005. He is survived by his mother and sister. As written above, we are collecting donations for his family via Paypal and mail at smallworldnews (at) gmail.com link

AIB’s Brian Conley broke the news in a series of updates on Twitter, including one in which he questions whether it is worth carrying on with AIB,

Is it time to quit? We’re barely scraping by, not even making our costs, guys r getting killed. This is real. maybe its time to close down?? 11:17 PM December 14, 2007 from web via NewTeeVee

The death of Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi brings the number of journalists killed in Iraq in 2007 to 47 making it by far the deadliest country to work in.
Update: Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi received a death threat before being killed. “At this point we know he received a death threat about 1 week before he was killed[, says Brian Conley of Alive in Baghdad] He had not informed our bureau chief, Omar, but his cousin knew about it, and told Omar last night. We are still not sure if that was connected to his work. I believe it seems very likely given the brutal details of his killing, but Omar thinks that since we were able to recover his tapes and camera, its less likely that he was targeted for his work. link