Kansas City, Mo. ? A photographer for The Kansas City Star was physically assaulted and threatened with death by an Iraqi police officer after she took pictures of officers beating a suspected pickpocket, the newspaper reported Wednesday.

Allison Long, 31, on rotation in Iraq for Knight Ridder newspapers, was walking inside a police cordon near the Baghdad Convention Center, where this week more than 1,000 Iraqi delegates met to pick a national assembly. She and two Iraqi colleagues saw Iraqi policemen, guns drawn, running after a man.

“It just looked like they were arresting the guy, so I started shooting (pictures),” Long said. “Suddenly, they kneed him in the groin, and down he goes.”

Long said the police beat the man in the head with the butts of their rifles.

When one of the officers noticed Long taking pictures, the officer began screaming at her. Within seconds, Long said, she and her two Iraqi colleagues, Omar Jassim and Ali Jassim, were surrounded by police and bystanders.

The Iraqi colleagues tried to shield Long from police reaching for her camera. Long said one plainclothes officer approached her from the back, wrenched her arm and spun her around as he tried to take her camera.

Long resisted, and the man drew his gun, released the safety catch and pointed it at her.

“He said he would kill us if we didn’t hand over the camera,” Long said. She refused.

As the scene escalated, an Iraqi official from a nearby passport office escorted the three to safety. He apologized on behalf of the police.

Long reported the incident to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog association for press freedoms.

The association has been collecting reports of journalists who have been threatened.