FREE MINDS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

Tuesday, April 08, 2003


More journalists killed or injured
The Reuters bureau chief in Beirut, Samia Nakhoul, was injured in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired on the Palestine hotel where much of the foreign press is located. A Ukrainian cameraman was, alas, killed and another Reuters correspondent was injured. Al-Jazeera also lost a correspondent today.

War may be hell, but I can't help but wonder why a campaign so geared to capturing hearts and minds cannot give tank crews a clearer sense of where the press, at least, is. By the way, CENTCOM's claim that a sniper fired at the tank from the roof of the hotel was patently false: seconds before the shell hit, a Jazeera correspondent was filing a live report right under the building, and there clearly were no outgoing shots at the time.

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