Dubai: An al Jazeera correspondent on April 8 became the ninth media casualty in the
20-day old Iraq war as the Baghdad office of the popular TV channel was struck in an
air raid and four staff of Reuters news agency were injured as US forces fired at a
downtown hotel that housed its office.
Tareq Ayoub died of injuries and another staff, Zohair al-Iraqi, was critically
wounded in the air raid, al-Jazeera said describing Ayoub as a "martyr of duty".
In another incident highlighting the high risks that war coverage entails, four
Reuters staff and a Spanish cameraman were injured when US fighters apparently
bombed the Palestine hotel on April 8, where many of the foreign media are based.
Pentagon said snipers fired from the Hotel at coalition forces and as such the hotel
would be a legitimate target.
The Reuters office was on the 15th and 17th floors of the Hotel.
Reports reaching Dubai spoke of two Polish journalists as having escaped from the
clutches of their Iraqi captors, who arrested them on April 7.
Marcin Firlei of TVN24 and Jacek Kaczmarkk of Polish Public radio "managed to escape
during the fighting in Nadiafin," Marcin's wife was quoted as saying by TVN24 after
she received a phone call from her husband.
Earlier in the day, the Abu Dhabi TV also said that its office in Baghdad had been
targeted.
PTI
