Journalist's federation marks killing of colleagues

The fourth anniversary of the still unexplained killing of three journalists by US troops in Baghdad on April 8, 2003 was marked on Monday by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) following a week of shocking attacks on journalists that saw four being killed and another 11 injured.

The deaths bring to 23 the number of media personnel killed in Iraq so far this year. At least 196 journalists and media workers have died in Iraq since the US invasion four years ago.

The IFJ and its national journalists' unions around the world, including the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IGM), the IFJ's Malta affiliate, renewed calls for the US to provide credible reports over a number of media deaths at the hands of US soldiers in Iraq.

Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of the attack by US troops on the Palestine Hotel, which housed scores of media personnel, killing Taras Protsyuk of Reuters, and José Cuoso, of the Telecinco network in Spain. On the same morning, journalist Tareq Ayyoub was killed when the Baghdad offices of the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera were attacked by US fighter planes.

"Four years on still no credible reports have been produced to explain these attacks and no one has been held to account for the killings," IFJ general secretary Aidan White said.

In December last year, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1738, a measure championed by the IFJ and its member unions that protects journalists in conflict zones and which says that killing them can be considered a war crime.

The IFJ has also demanded action over the deaths of British ITN reporter Terry Lloyd and his colleagues Fred Nérac and Hussein Osman, whose bodies are still missing, in a fire fight between US and Iraqi troops near Basra, in March 2003.