Samarra (Iraq): ISIS militants have executed an Iraqi news cameraman and 12 other people in several towns and villages north of Baghdad, officials, relatives and witnesses said. The jihadists on Friday shot dead Raad al-Azzawi, a 37-year-old cameraman for local news channel Sama Salaheddin, his brother and two other civilians in the village of Samra, east of the city of Tikrit, relatives of the journalist said.
According to the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the father of three was detained by ISIS on September 7. “They came to his home and took him and his brother,” the relative said. “He did nothing wrong, his only crime was to be a cameraman. There must have been some people in the village who accused him of working for the government and tipped him off the jihadists... He always had his camera with him,” he said.
According to an RSF statement issued last month, the ISIS had threatened to execute Azzawi on the grounds that he had refused to work for them. After targeting religious and ethnic minorities in the areas it took control during its broad Iraqi offensive four months ago, ISIS has recently executed dozens of people it suspects of any connection with the Shia-dominated government. ISIS executed nine other people north of Tikrit on Friday, all of them on suspicion of ties to anti-jihadist Sunni organizations, according to security officials. In the town of Az-Zab, 90 km west of oil hub of Kirkuk, six people were executed in public.
Meanwhile, 19 people have been killed in two car bombs in Shia parts of western Baghdad on Saturday night, police and medical officials said.
