A Syrian journalist working for Tishreen newspaper was killed in Damascus on Tuesday.

A Syrian journalist working for Tishreen newspaper was killed in Damascus on Tuesday.

"An armed terrorist group assassinated the journalist Naji Assaad in the Tadamun district of Damascus as he was on his way to the Tishreen newspaper,” a broadcaster on Syria’s state television announced on Tuesday.

A retired journalist in his sixties, Assaad contributed articles to Tishreen, the last of which was published on Monday.
The killing marked the second of a journalist in Tadamun in less than a fortnight. The neighborhood has been plagued by intermittent battles between armed groups and Syrian army since mid-summer.

On November 22, militants shot dead state television reporter Bassel Tawfiq Youssef in the violence-stricken neighborhood, and branded him a "shabiha", or pro-regime militiaman.

Fifteen professional journalists and 41 citizen journalists have been killed in Syria since the outbreak of the crisis in March last year, according to international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.