Journalists caught in crossfire

Baghdad

U.S. forces this week fired on Baghdad’s Hotel Palestine, where most foreign reporters in the city have been staying. Two TV cameramen, one from Reuters and one from the Spanish network Telecinco, were killed. The Americans said they were responding to gunfire in the area of the hotel. “We don’t target journalists,” said Capt. Frank Thorp of Central Command. Some of the reporters there, grieving for their colleagues, seemed skeptical. The Hotel Palestine “is a big tower,” said CNN’s Rym Brahimi. “It kind of sticks out in the center of Baghdad.” An Al-Jazeera journalist, Tareq Ayoub, who once worked for CNN, was also killed this week, when U.S. troops bombed the building housing the Arab satellite station.

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