An Iraqi journalist and two policemen were killed in two attacks in Iraq’s northern Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces on Wednesday, local police source said.

The policemen were killed and two others wounded in a bomb explosion near their patrol in the town of al-Zab, about 200 km north of Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In Nineveh province, unidentified gunmen with their silenced guns shot dead Safaa al-Khaiyatt, a religious programs presenter in the local television Mowselya, as he was leaving his house in the provincial capital city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Khaiyatt was heading to his work at a television station when the gunmen attacked him, he said.

The middle-aged journalist was the father of five girls and one boy.

The incident came a day after gunmen in Baghdad killed Riyadh al-Sarray, presenter of political and religious programs in the state-run television Iraqia.

Statistics of the Iraqi Union of Journalists showed more than 275 of its members and media workers have been killed since the start of the U.S.-led war in March 2003.

According to a report released Tuesday by Paris-based Reporters Without Borders on its website, the media watchdog said “the second U.S. war with Iraq was the most lethal for journalists since World War II.”

“Reporters Without Borders tallied 230 cases of journalists and media staff killed in the country since the conflict broke out on March 20, 2003. That is more than those killed during 20 years of the Vietnam War or the civil war in Algeria,” the report said.

The report called for a proper investigation to identify and arrest both the perpetrators and instigators of the killings and bring them to justice.

Violence is still common in Iraqi cities as security deteriorated, causing a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi government to restore normalcy in the country days after the U.S. military announced withdrawal of its combat troops from the war- torn country.