Editor says 3 slain were bodyguards

BAGHDAD —  Editors of the Watan newspaper Tuesday contradicted accounts by police officers who said three journalists had been shot to death in an ambush Sunday night in northern Iraq. The newspaper said the victims were bodyguards for the paper’s top editor, not reporters.

In an interview, editor in chief Hatam Mawlood Mukhlis said he had given his bodyguards press credentials because they occasionally gathered information for the newspaper. The IDs might have led police to believe the victims were journalists. However, Mukhlis said their primary responsibility was ensuring his personal safety.

The guards had just escorted Mukhlis to an engagement and were on a road near Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, when they were waylaid by gunmen.

The Times included the initial information from police in an article Tuesday about attacks on journalists in Iraq.

Two Iraqi reporters, including a correspondent for the Washington Post, were killed Sunday in separate attacks.