BEIRUT - An al-Qaida-linked group in Syria has executed an Iraqi freelance cameraman, the first foreign journalist killed by insurgents in the rebel-held north, a press freedoms watchdog said on Thursday.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized Yasser Faysal al-Joumaili while he was on a reporting trip in northern Syria's Idlib province on Dec. 4.
Joumaili was then executed and his body later arrived in Turkey, although the exact circumstances of his death were unclear, the watchdog said in a statement.
Joumaili was from the Iraqi city of Fallujah and had three children, it added. He worked for Reuters in Iraq from 2003 to 2009.