A female reporter working for an Iraqi Kurdish channel was killed in a roadside bomb attack while covering clashes between government forces and ISIL in Mosul, her channel said.
Killed on Saturday, Shifa Gardi was a presenter and chief of output at Rudaw, a media group in Kurdistan funded by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
“Prominent Rudaw war reporter and journalist Shifa Gardi has been killed in Mosul as she covered clashes,” Rudaw said on social media. “Rudaw loses one of its most prominent journalists in Mosul today.”
#Rudaw reporter and anchor Shifa Gardi killed in bomb attack in #Mosul https://t.co/2Ou13RZhjW via @RudawEnglish— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) February 25, 2017
“[She] was killed on Saturday in a roadside bomb explosion in Mosul,” a statement posted to Rudaw’s website said. “Gardi was one of Rudaw’s most daring journalists.”
Her cameraman, Younis Mustafa, was also wounded in the attack.
On February 21, Gardi saved a wounded rabbit in the village of Albu Saif, the channel said, citing the moment she returned to the newsroom with the animal in her arms.
The operation to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) was officially launched in October last year, and in January its eastern half was declared “fully liberated”.
Mosul is ISIL’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.
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