Two Iraqi Journalists Working for ABC News Killed in Ambush

BAGHDAD, May 18: Two Iraqi
journalists working for ABC News were ambushed and killed as they drove home
from the network's Baghdad bureau.

In a statement posted on
the ABC News website, ABC News president David Westin said that the attack took
place yesterday, when the assailants attacked the car carrying cameraman Alaa
Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, who had been on their way
home from work. They were stopped by two cars full of gunmen and forced to get
out of their car. They were unaccounted for overnight and their deaths were
confirmed in the morning.

"They are really our
eyes and ears in Iraq," said ABC Baghdad correspondent Terry McCarthy on Good
Morning America. "Many places
in Baghdad are just too dangerous for foreigners to go now, so we have Iraqi
camera crews who very bravely go out…Without them, we are blind, we cannot see
what's going on."

The New York-based
Committee to Protect Journalists has recorded 102 journalists and 39 media
support workers killed and 48 journalists abducted since the 2003 U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq. ABC correspondent Bob Woodruff was severely injured by a
roadside bomb in Iraq last year. A car bombing in May 2006 killed a CBS News
camera crew—British cameramen Paul Douglas and British soundman James
Brolan—as well as a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi translator. CBS
correspondent Kimberly Dozier was seriously wounded in the same attack.