IRAQ: World media bodies demanded a public inquiry yesterday into the killing by US troops of a Reuters television cameraman, the second journalist from the international news agency to be killed in Iraq in four months.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) in Paris urged Washington to investigate how, by the official US account, a soldier mistook Mazen Dana's camera for a grenade launcher on Sunday.
Reuters also wants an investigation into the second killing of one of its cameramen by a US tank crew. On April 8th, a shell killed Taras Protsyuk at Baghdad's media hotel. Troops said they thought a spotter was directing enemy fire.
"Coming so soon after the death of Taras Protsyuk, also killed by a US tank, this latest death is hard to bear," Reuters chief executive Mr Tom Glocer said in a statement.
"That's why I am personally calling upon the highest levels of the US government for a full and comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."
Dana, a 43-year-old Palestinian known for award-winning reporting from his home town of Hebron, was shot by a soldier on a tank as he filmed near the capital's Abu Ghraib prison. He was the 18th international journalist to die in the conflict.
Amnesty International said foreign journalists had a high profile among civilian victims of action by US forces: "They're definitely taking place on a very regular basis," the human rights group's Iraq researcher Said Boumedouha said. "This is increasing the anti-American feeling."
"Last night we had a terrible tragedy," US spokesman Col Guy Shields said in Baghdad. "I can assure you no one feels worse than the soldier who fired the shots."
American troops in Iraq are on high alert. Guerrillas have killed dozens of them in the past few months.
Many journalists paid their respects to Dana's colleagues at the Reuters bureau in the Iraqi capital. His camera, shattered as he fell under fire, still filming, lay broken in a corner.
Dana's body was being returned to his wife Suzan for burial near his West Bank home this week. He leaves four children.
Meanwhile, Iraq's US administrator, Mr Paul Bremer, has said attacks on Iraq's decrepit infrastructure and oil industry have cost the economy billions of dollars, as firefighters battled to control a pipeline blaze.
US army engineers dropped water from helicopters to try to douse the flames on the main oil export pipeline to Turkey, a crucial economic lifeline which reopened last Wednesday but which was shut down two days later after saboteurs set it ablaze.
Mr Bremer told CNN in an interview in Baghdad that hardcore supporters of fugitive dictator Saddam Hussein were behind the wave of sabotage attacks. "These are probably people left over from the old regime who are simply fighting a rearguard action by attacking Iraq's assets," Mr Bremer said.
Mr Bremer said that as well as targeting the oil export pipeline, saboteurs had been mounting frequent attacks on the power grid. Sabotage and theft of power cables have caused repeated electricity blackouts in the south of Iraq and badly hit exports from the country's southern oilfields.
A bomb attack on a major water pipeline in north Baghdad on Sunday cut off water supplies to up to four million people for several hours. - (Reuters)