Journalists' driver killed in Iraqi ambush
Gunmen ambushed an Associated Press driver today, riddling his car with bullets and killing him near his home in Baghdad.
Ismail Taher Mohsin, an Iraqi, was alone in his car when he was attacked about 7.15am at a crossroads in the Ghazaliya district – an area where residents had strongly supported the regime of Saddam Hussein, according to police and relatives.
More than 20 empty bullet casings littered the street, his relatives said. The car’s side and back windows were shattered by the attack, and a bullet hole pierced the windshield and the front passenger door. The inside of the car was covered in blood.
Nothing was stolen from Mohsin’s body, and his car was left at the scene by the attackers.
Relatives said Mohsin had received no threats or warnings. The attackers’ identity or motives were not known.
“The AP family is grief stricken at this loss,” said Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press. “Our profound sympathy goes out to Ismail’s wife, sons and family.”
Mohsin, born in 1954 in the southern city of Basra, was a Shiite married to a Sunni woman, Faeza Abbas Mohammed.
Mohsin graduated from Baghdad University’s school of administration and economics in 1984.
In recent days, Mohsin had repeatedly driven to the Umm al-Qura mosque, where the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group believed to have links to insurgents, gave news conferences regarding two Frenchmen taken hostage. The car, like nearly all those carrying journalists, did not have press markings.
Mohsin was headed to the mosque today when he was attacked.
