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Nature 441, 1036-1037 (29 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/4411036a; Published online 28 June 2006

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Special Report Scientists become targets in Iraq

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Violence is common currency in Iraq, but one group is increasingly and persistently singled out — academics. Declan Butler reports on the risks run by researchers as they struggle to pursue their studies.

A chemist's mutilated body dumped on a street in Basra; a physicist shot twice in the back in Baghdad; a dean of engineering kidnapped by a hit squad, his body left on his wife's doorstep. Each week brings reports from Iraq of assassinations or kidnappings of scientists, academics and intellectuals, in what many argue is a systematic effort to eliminate or exile a group crucial to the country's reconstruction.