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US fire kills 2 Iraqi journos
19/03/2004 10:25 - (SA)
Baghdad - A second Iraqi journalist for al-Arabiya television died from wounds on Friday after being shot by US soldiers late on Thursday, a correspondent from the Dubai-based satellite news channel told reporters.
"Ali al-Khatib died 30 minutes ago" in hospital, said Ahmad Salah, an al-Arabiyah correspondent, at around 09:30 (06:30 GMT).
Khatib was shot in the head, Salah said, his voice choked with tears.
His colleague Ali Abdul Aziz, a cameraman with the same station, was shot dead in the incident, which occurred near the Burj al-Hayat hotel in central Baghdad, the target of a rocket attack on Thursday night.
"My brother had asked US forces if they could film the Burj al-Hayat hotel and they told him it was fine. Moments later, a Volvo did not stop at the checkpoint and the soldiers opened fire," said the cameraman's brother Haidar Abdel Aziz.
They ran to their car
"My brother and his colleague wanted to leave, they ran to their car and an armoured vehicle opened fire on them."
Both Abdul Aziz and Khatib were Iraqi nationals.
A US army spokesperson confirmed that "one Iraqi was shot and killed while trying to run a checkpoint near the Burj al-Hayat hotel" in central Baghdad at 22:16 (19:16 GMT) on Thursday.
The spokesperson was unable to give the gender of the victim, nor say whether the person had been from the media. He also had no details on whether anyone else had been injured.
On August 18, the US army shot dead Reuters news agency cameraman Dana Mazen as he filmed outside Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
Camera 'looked like a weapon'
The Pentagon launched a probe into Mazen's death but ultimately absolved the soldiers, who said they thought the journalist's camera looked like a weapon.
Two cameraman were killed when a US tank fired on Baghdad's Palestine Hotel on April 8 last year.
The Pentagon said the troops thought they spotted a weapon from a window of the hotel, although it was home to Western media during the war.
A journalist from Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera was killed by indirect US fire when US troops stormed Baghdad last April.
Also on Thursday, three people were killed and 10 others wounded when gunmen opened fire in Baaquba, north of Baghdad, on a bus transporting the crew of an Iraqi television station funded by the US-led coalition, hospital sources said.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the minibus attack which Diyala TV head Saad Ali said had killed journalist Nadia Nasrat, technician Majid Rashid and security guard Mohammed Ahmed.
"The situation is extremely alarming. More and more local journalists are being killed in terrorist attacks in Iraq," the organisation said in a statement.
"They are particularly targeting media set up and supported by the coalition forces," it said.
With the latest deaths, the Iraqi conflict has now claimed the lives of 16 journalists.
- AFP
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