(CJFE/IFEX) – The following is a CJFE media release: Journalist Death Toll in Iraq Doubles Overnight April 8 – In just 24 hours, the number of journalists killed covering the war in Iraq has doubled and it is time now for both sides to stop targeting journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) said today. […]
(CJFE/IFEX) – The following is a CJFE media release:
Journalist Death Toll in Iraq Doubles Overnight
April 8 – In just 24 hours, the number of journalists killed covering the war in Iraq has doubled and it is time now for both sides to stop targeting journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) said today.
“It has been nothing less than a bloodbath,” CJFE Executive Director Joel Ruimy said of the carnage last night and this morning that claimed the lives of two correspondents and three cameramen. “With these new deaths, a total of nine journalists have been killed covering this war. Another three have died from other causes.
“That compares with four journalists killed in the entire six-week Gulf War of 1991 and eight during the Afghanistan War in 2001.”
Ruimy said the U.S. attacks on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, which killed two journalists and injured another two, and on the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi Television, which killed one and injured another, appear to have been unjustified.
U.S. troops said they came under sniper fire from the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists are staying. But CBS Correspondent Lara Logan, along with several other foreign journalists, are quoted in reports today as saying there was no gunfire from the hotel.
The latest casualties:
— José Couso, cameraman for the Spanish Telecinco television station, died today from injuries sustained when U.S. troops opened fire on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad;
— Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian citizen and cameraman for Reuters, killed today in the attack on the Palestine Hotel;
— Tarek Ayoub, cameraman for Al-Jazeera television, died today from injuries sustained in a U.S. air raid on the network’s Baghdad office;
— Julio Anguita Parrado, 32, correspondent for Spain’s El Mundo newspaper embedded with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division in southern Iraq, was killed yesterday in an Iraqi missile strike;
— Christian Liebig, 35, correspondent for the German weekly magazine Focus, killed yesterday in the same attack that claimed Anguita Parrado’s life.
Others killed earlier covering the war are:
— BBC translator Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, killed April 6 in northern Iraq after a U.S. warplane attacked a convoy of Kurdish soldiers traveling near the city of Mosul.
— Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian freelance cameraman on assignment for the BBC, killed April 2 after stepping on a land mine in northern Iraq.
— Paul Moran, a freelance cameraman working for the Australian Broadcasting Corp., killed in a March 23 suicide-bomb attack in northeastern Iraq;
— Correspondent Terry Lloyd of Britain’s ITN, killed March 22 by Coalition gunfire near the southern Iraq city of Basra.
Journalists covering the war who died of other causes are:
— NBC correspondent David Bloom, who died April 6 of a pulmonary embolism while traveling with U.S. troops.
— Michael Kelly, editor-at-large of the Atlantic Monthly and a columnist with the Washington Post, killed April 4 in a road accident involving the military vehicle he was traveling in;
— Gaby Rado of Britain’s Channel 4 News on March 30; his employer said “it appears he fell off the roof of his hotel with no apparent connection to any conflict activity” in Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq.
Two more colleagues are missing: Fred Nerac, a cameraman with Britain’s ITN, and translator Hussein Othman, both part of Terry Lloyd’s crew, disappeared in the same incident that claimed Lloyd’s life March 22.
CJFE is an association of more than 400 journalists, editors, publishers, producers, students and others committed to preserving press freedom and freedom of expression in Canada and around the world.
