The killing of Sardasht Osman, a final-year English student at Salaheddin University in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, earlier this month provoked widespread consternation and demands for the culprits to be caught.

"We are continuing to demonstrate to demand an inquiry to discover the murderers," Kamal Rauf, editor of the Kurdish newspaper Hawlati and one of the protesters in Sulaimaniyah, 270 kilometres (168 miles) north of Baghdad, told AFP.

Osman, 22, worked as a journalist for the magazine Ashtiname ("Letter for Peace" in Kurdish) and as an English-Kurdish translator. His body was found 24 hours after he was kidnapped on his university campus in Arbil on May 4.

Rauf accused the Kurdistan Democratic Party, of regional president Massud Barzani, of involvement in the murder of Osman, who had criticised the KDP.

"We want the creation of an independent commission to look into the murder," Rauf said.

"We also want the resignation of the minister of the interior (for the Kurdish region) Karim Sanjari, and those responsible for security in Arbil."

The Kurdish president has condemned the journalist's killing and in an official statement said an "investigation is in progress."

In its Press Freedom 2009 index published in October, Reporters Without Borders ranked Iraq at a lowly 145th place for media freedom out of 175 countries.

And according to the Committee to Protect Journalists' 2010 "Impunity Index" published last month, Iraq has the worst record of any country in the world when it comes to solving murders of reporters.