Chronology of media deaths in Iraq war

PARIS (AFP) Mar 19, 2004
The deaths of two Iraqi television journalists who came under US fire on Thrusday bring to 21 the number of media workers who have died since the start of the US-led war in Iraq a year ago.

Following is a chronology of incidents:

March 18, 2004

-- Al-Arabiya cameraman Ali Abdul Aziz and journalist Ali al-Khatib, both Iraqis, are shot by US troops during an incident in central Baghdad. Both die of their wounds.

January 27, 2004

-- Two Cable News Network (CNN) employees, producer Duraid Isa Mohammed and driver Yasser Khatab are killed and another wounded when their convoy is ambushed on the outskirts of Baghdad.

October 28, 2003

-- Ahmed Shawkat, an Iraqi local newspaper journalist, dies after suffering critical gunshot wounds in his office in the northern city of Mosul.

August 17, 2003

-- Mazen Dana, an award-winning Reuters TV cameraman, is killed near the Abu Gharib prison by US troops who apparently mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

July 5, 2003

-- Freelance British cameraman, Richard Wild, is fatally shot in the neck by unknown assailants outside Baghdad University.

April 14, 2003

-- Argentine journalists Veronica Cabrera, 28 and Mario Podesta, 51, die in a traffic accident, heading towards Baghdad. Both worked for Argentina's America TV.

April 8, 2003

-- Two cameramen die after a US tank fires on a Baghdad hotel housing most of the foreign media. The dead are identified as Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, a Ukrainian national, and Jose Couso, 37, who worked for private Spanish television station Telecinco. Another three Reuters staff are injured.

-- Tareq Ayub, a 34-year-old correspondent for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television, dies following a missile strike on the station's Baghdad offices. He was a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. Al-Jazeera accuses the US military of deliberately targeting its facilities.

April 7, 2003

-- Christian Liebig, 35, a correspondent with German weekly Focus, and Julio Anguita Parrado, 32, from Spanish daily El Mundo, are killed after a missile attack on a US operations centre.

April 6, 2003

-- US NBC television journalist David Bloom, 39, "embedded" with US troops in Iraq dies near Baghdad, apparently of natural causes.

-- Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, a 25-year-old Kurdish translator working with the BBC, dies after a US plane bombs a Kurdish-US convoy in northern Iraq in a "friendly-fire" attack.

April 4, 2003

-- Washington Post editorial columnist Michael Kelly is killed when the vehicle in which he is travelling with US troops plunges into a canal while evading Iraqi fire on the approach to Baghdad's main airport.

April 2, 2003

-- Kaveh Golestan, 52, a prize-winning Iranian photographer working as a cameraman with the BBC, dies when he steps out of his car on to a landmine in Kifri, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

March 30, 2003

-- Gaby Rado, 48, covering the war for British television network ITV, is killed when he falls from the roof of the Abu Sanaa hotel in Sulaymaniya, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. The circumstances of his death are not known.

March 22, 2003

-- Australian cameraman Paul Moran, 39, on assignment for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), is killed in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi town of Khurmal, under Kurdish control.

-- ITN correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, is killed near Basra, apparently by US-British fire, and an ITN cameraman is injured. Lloyd's French cameraman 43-year-old Fred Nerac and Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman are still missing.

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