Boston Globe journalist Elizabeth Neuffer, a former aide to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), was killed last week in Iraq when the car she was traveling in was said to have hit a guardrail en route from Tikrit to Baghdad, not far from the north-central town of Samarra.

Neuffer, who served as Dodd’s deputy press secretary from 1981 to 1983, had been working on a story about efforts to rid Iraq of the Baath Party when she was killed Thursday along with her translator, according to The Boston Globe.

“This is tremendously sad and tragic news,” Dodd said in a statement Friday. “My prayers and thoughts go out to her family and friends at this most difficult time.”

Over the course of her career, the 46-year-old Neuffer — who most recently was the Globe’s United Nations correspondent and a foreign correspondent — had covered many of the world’s major hot spots, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Her coverage of Bosnia and Rwanda war crimes netted her the SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism in 1997. Neuffer was also the recipient of the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Calling Neuffer a “top-flight reporter,” Dodd praised his former staffer for her “determination and commitment to report accurately and fairly on a story.”

Neuffer — author of “The Keys to My Neighbor’s House,” a 2001 book dealing with the struggle for justice in the aftermath of Bosnia and Rwanda — had previously been an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

She held a bachelor’s in history from Cornell University and a master’s in political philosophy from the London School of Economics.

— Bree Hocking