The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for a full investigation into the killing of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana.
Soldiers on an American tank shot dead the award-winning cameraman (43) in Iraq yesterday while hefilmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad which had earlier come under a mortar attack, witnesses said.
Mr Dana, a Palestinian, had worked for Reuters mostly in theWest Bank city of Hebron. The New York-based CPJ honoured him with its International Press Freedom Award in 2001 for his work in Hebron where he was wounded and beaten many times.
"In the midst of frequent violence, and often under attackhimself, Mazen was a determined witness who took constant risks in order to tell the world the news from the West Bank - and more recently from Iraq," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a statement on the committee's website.
The statement said the CPJ "calls for a full investigationinto the shooting and a public accounting of the circumstances".
The US military said yesterday that its troops had"engaged" a Reuters cameraman. It said soldiers had thought his camera was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer has called for "thefullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy".
Mr Dana's death brings to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq since the war began on March 20th.