RIP K-R’s Yasser Salihee, MD: Killed by US Sniper

The shot appears to have been fired by a U.S. military sniper

Salihee began working for Knight Ridder in early 2004. He said he left his position as a doctor at Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital because of low salaries paid by the Iraqi government. He didn’t lose his passion for helping others through medicine, though: He volunteered at medical clinics on his days off.

Knight Ridder Baghdad Bureau Chief Hannah Allam recently wrote of Salihee: “We weren’t really looking for reporters at the time, but Yasser’s impeccable English and sunny personality made him too hard to pass up. We hired him and took great delight in watching him blossom into one of our best reporters, the one who accompanied us to militant mosques and talked his way into insurgent-controlled Fallujah.”

In the last story he worked on, Salihee used his medical expertise to review records of Sunnis brought to city morgues after reportedly being taken by men in police uniforms.

Salihee is survived by his wife, Raghad, also a physician, and their 2-year-old daughter, Danya.
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Salihee, 30, had the day off and was driving alone near his home in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Amariyah when a single bullet pierced his windshield and then his skull.

He was shot as his car neared a joint patrol of American and Iraqi troops who’d stopped to search a building for snipers. […]

Most of the witnesses told another Knight Ridder Iraqi special correspondent that no warning shots were fired.