Reuters backed Iraqi news agency: U.S. forces killed the coach of Iraq's wheelchair basketball team

[sabra]

http://www.aswataliraq.info/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=34292&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

U.S.-Coach
Iraq's special basketball team coach killed

Baghdad, Jan 2, (VOI) – U.S. forces killed the coach of Iraq's basketball team for the disabled in front of his house in the area of al-Mansour, western Baghdad, according to an official in Iraq's Paralympics Committee.

"U.S. troops killed Ibrahim Abdullah on Monday after he was seen carrying a gun in front of his house," Paralympics Committee Secretary General Fakher al-Jamali told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

"The Americans, thinking that Abdullah was carrying a gun to attack them, opened a volley of fire at his direction, killing him instantly," said Jamali, adding Abdullah "stepped out of his house with his gun after he was informed about an armed group attacking the neighborhood where he resided."

Abdullah, a coach for the national team in 1995, has led the Iraqis to qualify to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

There's only one reference in the MSM:

from LA Times>

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-iraq2jan02,1,7244973.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1

<snip>

Ibrahim Abdullah, 44, coach of the Iraqi wheelchair basketball team and a father of three, was killed in a drive-by shooting in west Baghdad, said Saif Maliki, a member of the Sports Journalists Guild.

more info about Aswat al-Iraq

http://www.foundation.reuters.com/newsarchive/news.asp?newsid=284

Reuters Foundation develops independent news agency for Iraq

http://www.aswataliraq.info/ (Voices of Iraq), were in London last month to discuss the project’s next step. The agency is to become Iraq’s first independent and commercially viable news agency run and staffed by Iraqi journalists.

The project took off late last year when Reuters Foundation and UNDP established an online ‘news-exchange’, Aswat al-Iraq, http://www.aswataliraq.info/ (Voices of Iraq) to provide a means for Iraqi stringers to share their stories.

With additional resources now secured, Aswat Al-Iraq will be developed to create a news agency providing accurate, impartial and timely news to local, regional and international media. The agency will have journalists reporting from each of the 18 governorates in Iraq giving a full picture of the different events affecting local communities countrywide. All involved believe the project is vital to the survival of free media in Iraq.

New media has emerged since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, but the struggle to report the country without the basic service of a national news agency remains. Aswat al Iraq aims to meet that urgent need and its reports are already widely used in Iraqi media.

[xultar]

1. This shit keeps getting worse and worse. WHEN WILL IT END!

[sabra]

3. you really need to dig deep to find out what is going on...

[xultar]

4. Who in Iraq doesn't own a gun thanks to us? If the US shoots everyone with a gun

the whole country would be dead.

[bahrbearian]

2. Whats the NRA say about this?

[xultar]

5. NRA only wants white folks to own guns. So they won't give a shit.

[Morgana LaFey]

6. Is there NOTHING we can't screw up, profane, ruin, destroy?

This is heartbreaking, of course, but it's also one helluva nightmare -- and I'm talking about it as a symptom of everything we're doing wrong in Iraw, not JUST the tragedy of the specific of killing of this one man.