A senior US commander came under strong pressure from the media at US Central Command headquarters in the capital of Qatar yesterday to explain how three journalists were killed in Baghdad, writes Deaglán de Bréadún, in Doha
On the incident at the Palestine Hotel, the main media accommodation centre in city where two journalists died in shelling by US forces, Brig Gen Vincent Brooks initially cited reports that coalition forces were fired on from the hotel lobby but, when it was pointed out to him that the US tank fired at an upper floor, he said he "may have misspoken on exactly where the fire came from".
However, journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel have strongly denied there was any firing from the premises. The Sky News correspondent, David Chater, told Reuters: "I never heard a single shot coming from any of the area around here, certainly not from the hotel."
The Swiss television correspondent Ulrich Tilgner said: "I have not heard a single shot fired from here and I have not seen a single armed person enter the hotel."
Brig Gen Brooks said at the daily news briefing: "Initial reports indicate that the coalition force operating near the hotel took fire from the lobby of the hotel and returned fire, and any loss of life - civilian loss of life or unintended consequences, again, we find most unfortunate and also undesirable.
"This is not something we seek to do. At the same time, we know that we're conducting combat operations inside of an urban area, an area where the regime has chosen to deliberately defend and not stand down ..."
A journalist at the briefing asked him: "If you're claiming fire was coming from the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, why was this tank round directed at an upper floor?"
Brig Gen Brooks replied: "The response of fire is something that we always have to get more details \ as time goes on; of course, specifically, where the fire was returned and what was hit and where the fire came from. So I may have misspoken on exactly where the fire came from."
Afterwards, Mr Michael Massing, of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), expressed grave concern about the US military's approach to journalists covering the Iraqi conflict.
"At the briefing today the indications are that journalists operate at their own peril and even knowing in advance where they are located is no protection," he told The Irish Times.
Commenting on the separate attack on the building which housed the Baghdad bureau of the al-Jazeera television station, he said: "Al-Jazeera before the war sent a letter to Victoria Clarke, Assistant Defence Secretary at the Pentagon, saying that, 'Here is where our office is located', giving latitude, longitude, address, very specific co-ordinates of the location of their office. The Committee to Protect Journalists did the same thing based on information from al-Jazeera."
He added: "The building is very well known, its location, clearly to the Pentagon, which simply makes this type of incident all the more curious and demanding of investigation."
Mr Massing, who is a former editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, said the CPJ, whose board includes journalists such as Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather, would be mobilising its supporters on the issue of media safety.
The Al-Jazeera journalist, Omar al-Issawi, said he did not know, "either way", whether the attack on the station's Baghdad office was deliberate or not, but that "everybody knew there were journalists there". He added: "To think that they would intentionally target our bureau in Baghdad to kill people, that is beyond comprehension. I would find it incredible really if they would do that."