By: An Iraqi translator for Reuters was shot to death by gunmen, an apparent victim of sectarian death squads, the third employee of the news agency killed in Baghdad this week, Reuters reported on Saturday.
The London-based news agency did not identify the translator at the request of relatives, apparently to avoid publicizing the family's link to the company. The announcement of his death came a day after an Iraqi journalist for The New York Times was killed by gunmen.
The 30-year-old translator was killed Wednesday while driving with two of his brothers in southeast Baghdad, an area where Shiite and Sunni militants operate.
"It appears the killing was one of the dozens of executions carried out every day in Baghdad by sectarian death squads that roam the city despite the presence of some 100,000 U.S. and Iraqi security forces in the city," the agency said in its report on his death.
The staffer usually took Thursday and Friday off, so Reuters became concerned when he did not come to work on Saturday, it said. He had been working for the agency since March and was married with two young daughters, it said.
He was the seventh Reuters employee to be killed in the Iraqi conflict, including an Iraqi photographer and driver ? Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh ? who died Thursday during a clash between American forces and Shiite militiamen.
The Times reporter, Khalid W. Hassan, was killed by gunmen as he drove to work Friday morning in southern Baghdad.
The latest Reuters death brings to 151 the number of journalists and media support staffers ? the majority of them Iraqis ? killed since the 2003 U.S. invasion, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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