BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Two Iraqi women journalists were assassinated in north Iraq Wednesday in an unabated cycle of violence sweeping the country.
The Iraqi Association for Defending the Rights of Journalists said in a statement gunmen killed Lama Riyad in Baaqouba, a couple of hours after fellow journalist Fadia Tai was gunned down in the city of Mosul.
Riyad, a writer with ad-Dustour newspaper and the information center in the province of Diala, had previously said that she received death threats if she did not give up her profession.
Tai, an editor in al-Masar magazine, an independent weekly publication, was killed with her driver.
The Association pleaded with the Iraqi government to take urgent and quick measures to protect journalists and writers from systematic killing and kidnapping.
Earlier Wednesday, officials said Iraqi police liberated dozens of employees who were kidnapped Tuesday in a most daring raid on the Ministry of Higher Education in Baghdad.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdel Karim Khalaf announced that the ministry's security forces in cooperation with army forces carried out large-scale raids and searches overnight in several areas in Baghdad where they suspected the kidnap victims were held.
"Police succeeded in liberating 37 of the ministry employees who were abducted Tuesday," Khalaf said, without identifying the location where they were detained or the party standing behind the mass abduction, the most spectacular since killings and kidnappings have become a daily happening in Iraq.
Reports said gunmen stormed the ministry in broad daylight and snatched about 100 employees, including professors. But Khalaf said some 50 had been kidnapped.
