Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, who has been gunned down in the Iraqi city of Mosul aged 44, was an exemplar of the new generation of journalists in Iraq. While the violence has made it difficult for international media to cover the war, this has provided opportunities for Iraqi reporters to write about the conflict. But the risk is enormous. Of 108 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003, 86 have been Iraqis.
A print and radio journalist, Sahar had written for the Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq) news agency and local press as well as contributing pieces to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). Writing about the increasing attacks on women, on the fears and trauma of the "lost generation" of Iraqi youth, and on the escalating bloodshed, she was forthright in her coverage of those whom she saw contributing to the crisis and chaos, including the local Iraqi administration and US forces. But her fiercest criticism was for Islamist extremists seeking to turn Mosul, where she had lived since 1997, into the capital of a so-called "emirate" of northern Iraq.
She had written about how, according to the extremists' edicts, the heads of female manikins in shop windows had to be covered, and how tomatoes and cucumbers - supposedly of different genders - had to be served on separate plates. One particularly poignant feature was about the chief of the Mosul morgue, thought to be inured to death until a newly-arrived corpse, which turned up on his investigation table, turned out to be the charred body of his son, recognisable only by the graduation ring he himself had bought.
She was born in Baghdad into a professional family and educated at Baghdad University in business administration. Her real career began after the fall of Saddam in 2003, when international journalism training programmes by the Reuters Foundation, IWPR and others offered a new opportunity. She was one of the first students in IWPR's journalism training and reporting projects.
She contributed regular reports from Mosul, but as the violence grew, her personal dilemma became severe. At one point, she was only saved from a kidnapping when a US patrol happened by. At another, she was wounded in the stomach during cross-fire. A group linked to al-Qaida published her name as number four on a "hit list" of infidels.
In 2006, she moved her husband and four daughters, aged 11 to 17, to Damascus. A head-strong personality, deeply committed both to her country and her profession, she kept returning to Iraq. "Our psychological state is unbalanced because we live and think in fear and worry," she told the UK Press Gazette earlier this year. "But I never thought about quitting, as journalism is my life." Writing recently on an Iraqi Kurdish website, she published a photograph of herself and declared authorship of articles criticising extremists which had originally been printed under a pseudonym.
Both of her main publications, the IWPR and Voices of Iraq, instructed her to stay in Syria. Her editors spent three hours with her the day before her death, begging her not to return.
But the next morning she was in Mosul, chasing stories. As she left her house, she was confronted by gunmen from the Ansar al-Sunna extremist group. A statement claiming responsibility said she was killed because she had published "falsehoods" and supported the authorities. In fact, she published the truth and supported Iraqi people. IWPR is establishing a journalists' assistance fund in her name.
A Shia, she married Haithem al-Naqib, a Sunni teacher from Mosul. He survives her, as do their four daughters.
· Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, journalist, born July 15 1962; died June 7 2007
