Tuesday, April 08, 2003

At Least 3 Journalists Die During Fighting in Baghdad
At least three journalists, including a reporter for the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, were killed and several were wounded today during an American air raid and an artillery barrage in Baghdad.

The Al Jazeera reporter — Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian — was standing on the roof of the station's office just after dawn, doing a live broadcast of the warfare in Baghdad when the building was hit, by two air to surface missiles, officials at Al Jazeera headquarters said.

Mr. Ayoub, in his mid-30's, was carried to a car by colleagues but died on the way to the hospital, said Jihad Ballout, a spokesman for the channel.

An Iraqi cameraman, Zouhair al-Iraqi, who had started work with the station several days ago, was wounded, Mr. Ballout said.

Two other journalists, both of them television cameramen, were killed when a United States tank fired on a Baghdad hotel where most international journalists are based, according to witnesses.

Reuters reported that one of its television cameramen — Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw — died when a single shell slammed into the Reuters office on the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel. At least three other employees of the news agency were wounded.

In Madrid, officials of the Telecino Spanish television station said today that same blast fatally injured one of their cameramen, Jose Couso, 37.

Mr. Ballout, the spokesman for Al Jazeera, said that officials of the Arab satellite channel had informed the Pentagon of the location of its Baghdad office.

In a letter on February 24 to Victoria Clarke, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Pentagon, Al Jazeera gave the co-ordinates of its building as latitude 33.19, longitude 44.24 and altitude 63 meters, Mr. Ballout said.

The letter was signed by the channel's general manager, Mohamed Jassem Al-Ali, he said. The house on the Al Kharkh Road served as working space for the six Al Jazeera reporters, as well as cameramen and technical support staff, working in Baghdad for the channel.

In the case of the attack on the Palestine Hotel, American military officials said that their forces had been fired on first from the hotel.

Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the United States Army Third Infantry Division, was quoted by Reuters shortly after the incident saying that an American tank had fired a single round at the hotel.

"The tank was receiving small arms fire and RPG fire from the hotel and engaged the target with one tank round," the general said, referring to rocket-propelled grenades.

But some reporters challenged the military's account.

A British reporter based at the Palestine Hotel said he saw a United States tank aiming at the building before the explosion.

The reporter, David Chater of Sky Television said he did not hear any shots coming from within or around the hotel.

Mr. Chater said he was on a hotel balcony directly before the explosion and noticed the tank pointing its muzzle directly at the hotel. He said he turned away just before the blast.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/international/worldspecial/08CND-CAMERAMAN.html

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