US troops acted properly in self defence when they fired a tank round into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, accidentally killing a Reuters TV cameraman and another journalist, the US Central Command said today.
The command said an investigation of the April 8th incident concluded that a company of soldiers determined that an Iraqi "hunter-killer" team was using a spotter in the hotel to fire at them and was well within the rules of military engagement in responding.
The hotel served as a main base for dozens of international journalists covering the war in Baghdad.
"A Company was under heavy enemy attack," the command, based in Tampa, Florida, said in a two-page release on the investigation. "The company had positive intelligence that they were under direct observation from an enemy hunter-killer team."
The investigation cleared the troops of any wrongdoing, but the military said it was a tragic and regrettable accident. "The journalists' death at the Palestine Hotel was a tragedy and the United States has the deepest sympathies for the families of those who were killed," the release said.
The tank round hit a 15th-floor balcony used by Reuters in the 17-story Palestine hotel. The international news agency's Ukraine-born cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, was wounded and died on arrival at a Baghdad hospital. Debris damaged the floor below, where Spanish cameraman Jose Couso of Telecinco was fatally wounded.
The US military has said it was fired upon first from the hotel. But journalists there have questioned that version of events. Earlier this year, the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists said the incident could have been avoided.
Central Command said that it determined several key facts:
- American troops got possession of an "enemy radio" and monitored transmissions that indicated a spotter across the Tigris River was directing heavy fire at them.
- Company personnel "observed what they believed to be a enemy hunter-killer team on a balcony of a large, tan-coloured building. They also witnessed flashes of light, consistent with enemy fire, coming from the same general location as the building."
"One 120 mm tank round was fired at the suspected enemy observer position," the release said.
"Immediately following that, monitored transmissions indicated that the enemy observer was taking fire and co-ordinated enemy fire at A Company ceased."
The release said that it was only some time after the incident that the company realised that the building it had fire on was the Palestine Hotel and that journalists at the hotel had been killed and injured as a result.
"However, intelligence reports also indicated that the enemy used portions of the hotel as a base of operations and that heavy enemy activity was occurring in and immediately around the hotel," it added.
The Pentagon had earlier expressed regret for the deaths but said it had repeatedly warned reporters that the area was dangerous.