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Mayhem on mediamen

Tank shell kills Reuters, Spanish cameramen; missile slays Al-Jazeera reporter

STAR DESK
Three foreign journalists were killed and four more injured in US tank and missile attacks on a media hotel and a television station office yesterday in the growing onslaught on the media in Baghdad.
Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, and Madrid's Telecinco television cameraman Jose Couso were killed and three wounded when a US tank fired a shell at the hotel where they were working.
Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television correspondent Tareq Ayub died from his wounds following a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad office during an air raid.
Protsyuk, a Ukrainian national based in Warsaw, and Couso died after the blast at the Palestine Hotel, base for much of the foreign media in the Iraqi capital.
Reuters' Lebanese-born Gulf bureau chief Samia Nakhoul, Iraqi photographer Faleh Kheiber and British television satellite dish coordinator Paul Pasquale were also injured in the incident.
Doctors said Nakhoul and Kheiber were treated in hospital for facial and head wounds and concussion and their injuries were not serious. Pasquale was taken to hospital with leg injuries but
doctors said he was not in danger.
"We are devastated by the death of Taras (Protsyuk), who had distinguished himself with his highly professional coverage in some of the most violent conflicts of the past decade," said Reuters Editor-in-Chief Geert Linnebank.
US forces said one of their tanks had fired on the hotel after taking incoming sniper and rocket fire, though journalists reported hearing no such fire from the hotel.
Sky Correspondent David Chater, who was at the hotel during the incident, said he did not hear
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any shots coming from within or around the Palestine Hotel.
He said he noticed a US tank pointing its gun muzzle directly at the hotel from a balcony and turned away just before the blast.
Al-Jazeera Baghdad correspondent Maher Abdullah said the missile strike destroyed an electricity generator and set fire to the office.
Zuheir al-Iraqi, a cameraman of the network, was hit in the neck by shrapnel in the blast, which the network charged was a deliberate strike.
"We were caught by surprise," Abdullah said. One missile hit the pavement in front of us, ripping out windows and doors and then one hit the generator. The office is now on fire," he said.
Another satellite station, Abu Dhabi TV, announced its Baghdad bureau had also been hit and broadcast a live report showing its camera position under attack.
Footage from the network showed a fire blazing in the Jazeera office, which is in a multi-storey building.
Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni, who made his name covering the US-led war on Afghanistan, was seen carrying a wounded colleagues into an Abu Dhabi TV car.
Earlier on Saturday, Christian Liebig, a correspondent of the German weekly Focus and Julio Anguita Parrado, correpondent of Spanish newspaper El Mundo, were killed when an Iraqi missile impacted near an operations centre set up by the American military.
Both of them were 'embedded" with the United States 3rd Infantry Division.