A journalist has been shot dead by a Kurdish security force near a presidential site in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, police said on Saturday.

Mohammed Bdiewi, also a teacher of the media college at Baghdad 's Mustansriyah University, was shot dead in Baghdad's central district of Karrada. Sources said Bdiewi was heading to his office at Free Iraq Radio station when he had a dispute with soldiers guarding a presidential site belonging to Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani.

Talabani has been in Germany recovering from a stroke since the end of 2012.

Earlier the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate said that more than 390 journalists have been killed in Iraq since 2003, 17 of whom were killed in 2013, the highest toll since 2008.