Feb 25, 2017

A female reporter working for an Iraqi Kurdish channel was killed in a roadside bomb attack while covering clashes of the new Mosul Offensive inside the western city.

Journalistic Freedoms Observatory JFO’s Representative accompanying the Iraqi Security Forces ISF there said “Shifa Gardi Killed on 30 year old the presenter and chief of output at Rudaw, a KDP media group in Kurdistan”

“Her Cameraman Younis Mustafa in a serious condition of severe injuries” the representative added.

JFO’s US representative “Bashar Mandalawi” tweeted “Iraq is NEVER safe for journalists at all, we always say it’s never safe, No guidance where landmines located by ISIS terrorists”

Mandalawi described the current “Mosul a hell on Earth now”

The operation to retake Iraq's second-largest city from the So-called Islamic State “ISIS” was officially launched in October last year, and in January its eastern half was declared "fully liberated" by the prime minister PM Haider Al-Abadi.

Gardi had recently started presenting a daily show on the Mosul offensive, the early stages of which Kurdish peshmerga forces took part in.

Ranked 158th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders´ RSF 2016 World Press Freedom Index, Iraq is one of the world´s most dangerous places for journalists.

Mosul is ISIS's last major urban stronghold in Iraq, but the battle to retake its western half is expected to be the most challenging yet, since the streets are older, narrower and is densely populated with an estimated 750,000 civilians trapped in the area.