Date:09/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/09/stories/2003040901671500.htm

International

Snipers triggered U.S. action?

BAGHDAD APRIL 8. Three journalists — from Reuters, Al-Jazeera and the Spanish network Telecinco — were killed on Tuesday after coming under fire from U.S. troops in Baghdad. Three others were wounded.

The London-based Reuters news agency said Taras Protsyuk (35), was killed when his room in the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad was hit by a tank shell.

In Madrid, Telecinco said its cameraman Jose Couso (37), died after undergoing surgery from wounds sustained in the shelling of the hotel. He was the second Spaniard killed in Iraq this week. U.S. commanders said its troops were firing at snipers who were shooting mortars and small arms fire from the hotel, the main base for foreign journalists staying in Baghdad.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Al-Jazeera correspondent, Tareq Ayyoub, a Jordanian, was killed when the Qatar-based satellite television's Baghdad office was hit during fighting between tcoalition and Iraqis.

Ten foreign journalists have been killed since the war began in Iraq on March 20. Many foreign journalists covering the war have been staying at the Palestine Hotel, located on the east side of the Tigris across the river from the Information Ministry and other key Government buildings.

Mr. Protsyuk, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw, was in his hotel room at the time of the shelling, Reuters said.

Samia Nakhoul, the agency's Gulf bureau chief, was wounded in the blast along with the British technician, Paul Pasquale, and an Iraqi photographer, Faleh Kheiber, also Reuters employees. None of the injuries were life-threatening, the news agency said.

``The incident ... raises questions about the judgment of the advancing U.S. troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad,'' the Reuters Editor-in-Chief, Geert Linnebank, said.

Mr. Couso died during surgery for wounds in his leg and jaw, his network said.

Al-Jazeera said two missiles destroyed the office where Qatar-based satellite network is based in Baghdad, killing Mr. Ayyoub, a Jordanian, and wounding another cameraman.

The Al-Jazeera office is on the west bank of the Tigris, along a road that links the Information Ministry with the old palace presidential compound. One Al-Jazeera correspondent accused coalition forces of deliberating targeting the agency's offices and those of Abu Dhabi Television. Nabil Khouri, a U.S. State Department spokesman at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar, said the strike on the Al-Jazeera office was a mistake.

— AP