Baghdad – Three journalists were killed and at least a half-dozen were injured Tuesday in three separate attacks by American forces in Baghdad, including one that fatally injured a reporter for the Arab TV network Al Jazeera as he was doing a live broadcast.
The casualties occurred in locations that were well known to the Pentagon as headquarters for journalists. The prior knowledge prompted a prominent U.S. media watchdog group to question whether … in at least one of the cases … the American military might be deliberately targeting journalists.
The first attack of the day occurred at 7 a.m. when reporter Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian, was standing on the roof of Al Jazeera’s local offices doing a live broadcast about an unfolding American troop offensive in the nearby neighborhood.
The building was hit by two air-to-surface missiles, killing Ayoub and wounding an Iraqi cameraman. Two maintenance employees were trapped in the rubble and believed dead.
The second attack, minutes later, did major damage to the nearby offices of another Arab channel, Abu Dhabi TV. Cameramen were filming U.S. tanks in the area when their cameras were hit by small-arms fire, then the building was hit by at least one tank round. An unknown number were injured, and many were trapped in the wreckage throughout the day.
In the third attack, at midday, a U.S. tank round hit the 14th and 15th floors of the Palestine Hotel, where about 200 foreign journalists are lodged. Killed in the blast were Reuters TV cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, and Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman for Madrid-based TeleCinco, a private TV network. Three others were injured … one of them critically.
Officials at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, admitted that American fire was responsible in all three cases. In the incidents involving Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV, the officials suggested that American forces did not know that the locations were media outlets.
"This coalition does not target journalists,‘’ Gen. Vincent Brooks said in response to a question about the Al-Jazeera attack. "We don’t know every place journalists are operating on the battlefield. It’s a dangerous place indeed.‘’
Al-Jazeera’s Baghdad bureau released to reporters a copy of a letter that the station sent February 24 to Victoria Clarke, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, giving the building’s exact coordinates.
"They knew exactly what we were and where we were,‘’ said bureau chief Salem Alamir. ""They told us that we had nothing to worry about.‘’
Nabil Khoury, a State Department spokesman in Qatar, said the strike on the Al-Jazeera office was a "grave mistake.‘’
The Abu Dhabi TV building was clearly marked with a large white sign on its roof that would have been visible from far away.
In the case of the Palestine Hotel, Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division, said that an American tank had fired on the building in self-defense.
"The tank was receiving small arms fire and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire from the hotel and engaged the target with one tank round,‘’ the general said.
But journalists lodged at the Palestine widely rejected the U.S. assertion, noting the lack of any indication that weapons were being fired from the hotel. A Chronicle reporter was in his room on the hotel’s 11th floor in the minutes leading up to the blast, then descended to the ground floor and was walking through the hotel’s lobby as the attack occurred.
It was a time of a brief lull in the fierce fighting that had engulfed the district throughout the morning and previous night. Amid the quiet, with everyone’s ears finely attuned to the proximity of weapons fire, any firing from the hotel would have reverberated loudly and would have been heard by everyone. No such noises were heard.
U.S. Army Col. David Perkins, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, which deployed the tank, said later that the crew aimed at the hotel after seeing enemy "binoculars.‘’ Dozens of lenses of TV and still cameras were trained on the battle from the hotel.
Injured in the attack were three Reuters employees … TV technician Paul Pasquale, a British citizen; bureau chief Samia Nakhoul, a Lebanese; and photographer Faleh Kheiber, an Iraqi.
Pasquale underwent surgery for serious leg injuries, according to colleagues. Nakhoul suffered shrapnel wounds and was in critical condition late Tuesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a widely respected New York organization, wrote a strongly worded letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday in response to the Baghdad events. The group said the attacks violate the Geneva Conventions, which bar attacks on the media, and said the Al-Jazeera attack "raises questions about whether the building was deliberately targeted.‘’
The letter, signed by Joel Simon, the group’s acting executive director, also pointed out that Al-Jazeera was subjected to a similar U.S. attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, only a year and a half ago.
Al-Jazeera, the Arab world’s most widely watched channel, uses professional techniques and an aggressive, American-style reporting style. But its unabashed pro-Arab views and its critical coverage of U.S. policy in the Mideast have earned it the reputation among many in the United States as so anti-American as to be virtually an enemy propaganda organ.
In recent months, the Bush administration took a decidedly cool attitude toward journalists based in Baghdad. While it allowed hundreds of reporters to become ""embedded’’ with U.S. military units in the field, it urged journalists to leave Baghdad before the war started, saying it would be very dangerous.
In early March, Pentagon officials privately told several media organizations, including CNN and the Washington Post, that the Baghdad hotel where most Iraq-based journalists had been staying until then, the Al-Rashid Hotel, would be a military target. So journalists vacated the Al-Rashid and moved into the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, two miles away. It is not clear whether any similar warning was given by the Pentagon about those two hotels.
"While sources in Baghdad have expressed deep skepticism about reports that U.S. forces were fired upon from the Palestine Hotel, even if that were the case, the evidence suggests that the response of U.S. forces was disproportionate and therefore violated international humanitarian law,‘’ the Committee to Protect Journalists letter said.
"Even if the Iraqi forces were firing from both the Palestine and Al-Jazeera’s offices, as the Pentagon has alleged, U.S. forces must factor in the likely harm to civilians when considering an appropriate response, according to the Geneva Conventions.‘’
Nine journalists, including the three who died Tuesday, have been killed in combat since the war began, and two others have died in noncombat-related incidents.
[thumb=B]76.JPG[/thumb]
^Tareq Ayyoub’s photo in BG
