'Wash Post' Correspondent Slain in Iraq

By: E&P Staff Salih Saif Aldin, 32, a veteran Washington Post special correspondent was shot to death Sunday in Baghdad. He became the first reporter for the newspaper to be killed during the war.

"Courageous beyond imagination, Salih was determined to unveil the truth," said Sudarsan Raghavan, the Post's Baghdad bureau chief, in a report in the paper. "He was instrumental to The Post's coverage of Iraq. He will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues."

"Salih's loss reminds us once again of the central role Iraqi journalists have played in coverage of the war and the immense sacrifices they have made to help us understand it," said David E. Hoffman, The Post's assistant managing editor for foreign news. "We grieve at his death and that of all those Iraqi and other journalists who have died in the conflict, displaying courage in the pursuit of truth."

An excerpt from the Post's report on his death follows.
*

He was reporting on the violence that has plagued Baghdad's Sadiyah neighborhood Sunday afternoon when he was shot in the forehead. According to residents of the neighborhood and the Iraqi military officers at the scene, he was taking photographs on a street where several houses had been burned when he was killed. His wounds appeared to indicate he was shot at close range.

At least 118 journalists have been killed in Iraq while on duty, nearly 100 of them are Iraqis, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Foreign news organizations rely heavily on their Iraqi staff members to navigate the hazards of reporting here.

Saif Aldin left The Post's Baghdad bureau Sunday afternoon in a taxi to interview residents in Sadiyah about clashes between militiamen and insurgents. A Washington Post colleague received a telephone call just after 4 p.m. from a man who said he was a police officer and who was using Saif Aldin's cell phone. The man said he was standing next to Saif Aldin's body, which later was observed lying on the street, covered with newspapers.

A divorced father of a 6-year-old daughter, he distinguished himself as one of the most fearless reporters in The Post's Baghdad bureau. He began work for the paper in early 2004 as a stringer in his hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

In July 2005, he received a note threatening his life if he did not quit journalism and leave the city. He refused. "This is my city, and I'm a journalist," he told colleagues.

Shortly after, he was attacked by two men, who beat him with their fists, a metal pipe and the butt of a pistol, leaving him with bruises all over his body and opening a gash in his head that required eight stitches. After he was released from the hospital, The Post implored him to leave Tikrit. When he refused, Omar Fekeiki, the newspaper's former office manager and special correspondent, said he was told he would be fired if he didn't leave.

Saif Aldin later moved to Baghdad, where he repeatedly braved the city's most dangerous neighborhoods, often traveling alone.

In addition to his work for The Post, he was studying for his political science degree at Baghdad University and had studied Hebrew at the Baghdad University College of Languages. Shortly after graduating, he was hired as a correspondent in Tikrit for Al-Iraq Al-Yawm, or Iraq Today. He was hired at The Post on the recommendation of the editor-in-chief of Al-Iraq Al-Yawm.

Saif Aldin cut an imposing figure: balding and barrel-chested, with a jagged scar on his muscular neck from a fight in his youth. He remained undaunted by the potential dangers of reporting in Baghdad. He met commanders of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia, and sat down with leading Sunni insurgents, becoming for The Post a crucial conduit for exploring the motivations behind the complex violence in Iraq. For security reasons, Saif Aldin sometimes wrote under a tribal name, Salih Dehema.

Despite his forays into Baghdad's underworlds, Saif Aldin was always a kind and generous person, with a broad smile and a warm and frequent laugh.