Media workers in Iraq have been warned that "war is a dangerous, dangerous business" during the course of a US apology for yesterday's killing of two journalists in Baghdad.
The US Defence Department's chief spokeswoman Ms Victoria Clarke was responding to questions about the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad by a US tank. The hotel is known to be housing journalists covering the war.
Camermen from Spain and the Ukraine were killed in the incident, which was prompted, the US says, by gun fire coming from the building. However, journalists in the hotel at the time the single round was fired say there was no gunfire coming from the building.
"We are at war. There is fighting going on in Baghdad. Our forces came under fire. They exercised their inherent right to self-defense," Ms Clarke told a news briefing.
But the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded in a letter to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Pentagon investigate the attack and US air strike that hit the Baghdad office of Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite network, killing a journalist, and damaged the nearby office of Abu Dhabi TV.
Amnesty International also called for an independent investigation.
"Unless the US can demonstrate that the Palestine Hotel had been used for military purposes, it was a civilian object protected under international humanitarian law that should not have been attacked," Amnesty International said in a statement.
"If it had demonstrably been used for military purposes, it should not have been attacked by a tank shell, clearly incapable of careful targeting in this case."
AFP