Iraq: Gunmen kill female TV presenter

In northern Iraq, gunmen murdered a female TV presenter as reported by her station and police. The death on Sunday makes her the sixth journalist to be killed in the country since October.

Nawras al-Nuaimi was near her home in Mosul when she was shot, Al-Mosuliyah TV said. She was the fifth journalist killed in the northern city as reported by Al-Jazeera. 

Mosul is a mostly Sunni Arab region and known to be one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq. Militants frequently carry out attacks and reportedly extort money from shopkeepers for their cooperation to keep running businesses.

Earlier this month, Kawa Ahmed Germyani, the editor-in-chief of Rayal magazine and a correspondent for Awene newspaper, was shot and killed in front of his mother in Kalar, Sulaimaniyah province, in the Kurdistan region.

Reporters Without Borders, a media rights watchdog claimed it was "worried about the very dangerous climate for journalists both in Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, and about the impunity enjoyed by their attackers and killers."

Also killed in Mosul, Alaa Edwar, a Christian journalist working for the Nineveh al-Ghad television network, was shot in November.

Al-Mosuliyah cameraman Bashar Abdulqader Najm and two journalists from the Sharqiya television channel -- Mohammed Karim al-Badrani and Mohammed Ghanem -- were also killed in Mosul in October.

Iraq has come under fire for criticism over its lack of media freedom. It ranks first in the Committee to Protect Journalists' Impunity Index, which keeps track of unsolved murders of journalists.

Continually rising, more than 6,400 people have been killed in since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures.