Special report:Tension escalates in Iraq

    BAGHDAD, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- Gunmen assassinated an Iraqi cameraman working for a U.S. news agency in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, a local police source said.

    "Aswan Fath Allah, a cameraman and journalist working for the Associated Press News Agency, was shot dead by gunmen while he was walking in the Karama neighborhood in eastern Mosul," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

    Yasser al-Hamdani, Fath Allah's colleague, said that Allah had worked as cameraman since 2003 starting with Kirkuk local television before he joined the news agency.

    According to the Journalistic Freedom Observatory, a local media watchdog, up to 57 Iraqi journalists and media workers have been killed so far this year in the war-torn country.

    At least 87 journalists and 39 media support workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led war began in March 2003, according to statistics provided by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists on its website.