Kurdish journalist killed

ARBIL, Iraq: An Iraqi Kurdish reporter was killed and another wounded on Sunday during a military operation against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq, officials said.

The incident occurred during an operation launched by the Kurdish peshmerga forces near Mosul, the country’s second city and the jihadist organisation’s de facto capital in Iraq.

The journalists, working together for Kurdistan TV, were following peshmerga forces involved in the assault which began early on Sunday.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party, which owns the channel, announced the death in a statement.

“We deplore the loss... of cameraman Mustafa Said from the Kurdistan TV satellite channel and the injury of correspondent Hayman Nanqli,” the KDP media office said in a statement.

It said the incident was caused by a mortar round fired into a village recently retaken by the peshmerga from IS.

Iraq’s Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, a press freedom NGO, confirmed the cameraman’s death. A peshmerga commander said the goal of the operation was to secure a part of the Nineveh plain between Mosul and Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region.