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[casi] News, 09-16/04/03 (9)



News, 09-16/04/03 (9)

FALL OF MOSUL

*  US, Kurdish forces entering Mosul
*  Kurds avenge a generation of oppression with the bloodless capture of
oil-rich Mosul
*  Banks ransacked as Iraqi army flees Mosul
*  Kurds blamed for chaos in Mosul
*  War Brings Casualties to Iraqi Village
*  US admits Mosul killings
*  U.S. Says Shot Seven Iraqis in Mosul Protests
*  Mosul commander speaks

MEDIA WAR

*  Jubilant scenes not shown on Syrian TV
*  'We were almost lynched', say journalists
*  Spanish journalists snub Straw
*  Were these deaths mishap, or murder?
*  The awful news CNN had to keep to itself
*  CNN Was Target
*  Radio Free Iraq to Open Baghdad Bureau
*  Two in CNN Crew Hurt in Iraqi Gunfight


FALL OF MOSUL

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/11/1049567847841.html

*  US, KURDISH FORCES ENTERING MOSUL
Sydney Morning Herald, from AFP, 11th April

US and Kurdish forces have begun to move into the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

The move into the city began as Iraqi forces surrendered their weapons along
the "green line" separating Iraqi and Kurdish-controlled areas of the north.

"Within recent hours, I am told that in Mosul there appears to be an
opportunity for the regular Iraqi forces to turn in their weapons and no
longer pose a threat," he told reporters after meeting with members of
Congress.

"In which case, Kurdish forces and US forces in small numbers are in the
process of moving into Mosul," he said.

He said US forces were in "good communication" with the Turkish government
and the process was being conducted in an orderly fashion.

"And the forces that are entering are being welcomed by the people," he
said.

The change in Mosul came just hours after Kurdish and US forces entered
Kirkuk, another oil city in northern Iraq, following the withdrawal of Iraqi
forces.

"We've had a consistent information plan where we've communicated through
leaflets, through radio, through television advising the Iraqi forces that
the Saddam Hussein regime was done and that we strongly recommended that
they not die for a dead regime," Rumsfeld said.

"I am told it has happened along some portion of the green line," he said.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396408

*  KURDS AVENGE A GENERATION OF OPPRESSION WITH THE BLOODLESS CAPTURE OF
OIL-RICH MOSUL
by Patrick Cockburn in Mosul
The Independent, 12th April

After 30 years of massacre and expulsion at the hands of Saddam Hussein, the
Kurds have in the past two weeks won victories and captured cities and towns
that most of them have not seen for a generation.

Kurdish forces yesterday rolled unopposed into Mosul, the northern capital
of Iraq, as the Iraqi army and security forces fled. The entire Iraqi V
Corps surrendered with its commander. But the extent of the Kurdish
conquests are already causing acute embarrassment in Washington, and rage in
Ankara, as America tries, with few troops in the north, to rein back its
Kurdish allies and avert a Turkish invasion.

After the surprise Kurdish capture of Kirkuk on Thursday, ostensibly to
restore order, but in practice an attempt to establish facts on the map
before the war ends, America rushed 2,000 of its men to secure the country's
largest and most famous oilfields. But they left themselves with few men to
stop mass looting in Mosul that began as soon as the Iraqi army and security
forces left.

Scores of young men smashed down the doors of the imposing Iraqi Central
Bank in the central square of Mosul, emerging minutes later with bundles of
newly printed bank-notes in their arms.A young Christian priest, from
Mosul's sizeable Christian minority, said: "A few months ago Saddam
amnestied everybody in prison in Iraq, so there are plenty of criminals and
even convicted murderers able to take advantage of the present situation."

The mood in the centre of Mosul was a curious mixture of a carnival
free-for-all and mounting anxiety as people realised the iron rule of
President Saddam Hussein had collapsed, but few Kurdish troops and no
Americans had entered the city. A small, yellow flag of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party floated over one end of the governor's office and the Iraqi
flag over the other but inside looters were in control. One man was trying
to drag a hideously ornate gold and purple sofa, which had decorated the
Iraqi governor's office, down the stairs into the street.

Of the governor and the top Baathist officials in Mosul there was no sign.
Nathan Abdul Ahad, a Syrian Catholic teacher, said: "We think they left on a
train from the railway station going to Syria the night before the city
fell." Lightly armed peshmerga have been edging closer to Mosul for days,
advancing as US bombers forced the Iraqi army to retreat from its devastated
strong points.

"For three days we have been thinking that the regime was going to collapse
here," Mr Ahad said. "We knew everything that was happening because we
listened to foreign radio broadcasts in Arabic and watched Kurdistan
Television." American tanks, airlifted with difficulty into a mountain
airstrip in Kurdistan, were said to be advancing on Mosul last night, but
without many infantry. For some in Mosul they cannot arrive too early.
Outside the governor's office, an angry man called Amir, a geologist who
deserted from the Iraqi army at the start of the war, shouted angrily: "Why
do you let people steal the public belongings? Those murderers should be
hanged." This seemed excessive. Much of the looters' haul was shabby office
chairs and old window frames.

One reason there are no Americans in Mosul is probably the sudden surge into
Kirkuk by the peshmerga of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on
Thursday, in breach of agreements with America and the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP) not to take the city, regarded by Kurds as their true capital.
"We had agreed not to go in," said Hoshyar Zebari, a leader of the KDP. "But
when the PUK advanced into the city we had to go too. The Americans are
angry about what happened."

Within hours 2,000 US troops were rushed in to take over the oilfield. Given
that in northern Iraq there are only between 3,000 and 4,000 US troops,
mostly from the 173rd Airborne Brigade and special forces, this did not
leave many men spare to occupy the city.

Mosul, the most beautiful city in Iraq, has historically always been a
centre of Arab nationalism, with many of the officer corps of the Iraqi army
born there. Of the one million population of the city some 300,000 are
Kurds, almost all on the east bank of the Tigris around the Nabi Yunis
mosque, a striking monument built by Saddam Hussein.

The KDP and the Americans may not be welcome in the long term. Amir, the
geologist and army deserter, who demanded the US shoot looters, suddenly
added: "But the Americans must not enter our houses or interfere with our
lives."

We had walked up a narrow street with a drain down the middle in the old
city looking for a safe house for the night. When we got back to our car,
parked opposite a mosque, our driver, Yusuf, normally taciturn, was looking
shaken.

He said that while we were away 100 people who had been praying left the
mosque and surrounded his car. They wanted to know what a Kurd from outside
Mosul was doing in their city. Yusuf said: "One of them yelled, 'Let's kill
him and burn his car.' Wiser counsel prevailed, but some men in the crowd
warned him to get out of the neighbourhood.

Kurdish leaders know the scenes of mass looting in Mosul and Kirkuk are
damaging their image as responsible members of the Anglo-American coalition.
But there is not a lot they can do about it. At a bridge on the Khazar
river, blown up by the Iraqi army last week and now hastily repaired,
peshmerga trying to turn back potential looters were overwhelmed by sheer
numbers.

The KDP peshmerga may also have felt that the last thing they wanted to do
was start shooting looters, Arab or Kurd, since their own position in Mosul
is somewhat anomalous. The KDP also does not want to provoke the Turks by
aggressively taking control. This gives the looters free rein.

The US, as it feeds in more troops, will take control of Mosul and Kirkuk
cities. But they will be unable to stop, even if they wanted to, a more
long-lasting change in northern Iraq.

One truckload of peshmerga we followed had a pot of yellow paint and stopped
at abandoned Arab villages to write KDP on the walls. Some 300,000 Kurdish
refugees are beginning to return, promising not to harm Arabs who always
lived side-by-side with the Kurds. But many Arabs may feel they are no
longer safe in areas falling under the sway of the Kurds.


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/12/1050069110441.html

*  BANKS RANSACKED AS IRAQI ARMY FLEES MOSUL
Sydney Morning Herald, 12th April

Mosul, AP: Iraq's third largest city was thrown open to the law of the
streets as Iraqi army troops fled and a storm of looting left banks
ransacked, ambulances hijacked and residents wondering when order would
return.

Kurdish militia and US special operations troops moved into the city
yesterday and residents shouted in English at passing US forces: "Why are
you late? Why are you late?"

The US special forces commander in northern Iraq announced a 10pm to 6am
curfew in the city.

Earlier, Iraqi dinars littered the streets as townspeople sacked the central
bank and Mosul University's library, with its rare manuscripts. Appeals
blared from the mosque minarets implored people to stop destroying the city,
the Arab language TV al-Jazeera reported. People waved flags of the Kurdish
Democratic Party.

"There is absolutely no security ... The city has fallen into anarchy," said
staff physician Dr Darfar Ibrahim Hasan at Saddam General Hospital, where
armed men described as Kurds stole three of the five ambulances.

Jumhuriya Hospital officials said all eight of its ambulances were taken at
gunpoint just hours after the Iraqi Army's 5th Corps fled. The corps was the
main Iraqi force in northern Iraq.

Few government offices or institutions were spared, with the coalition
leaders helpless to stop the mayhem in this city of 600,000 people.

Rioters stormed the city's Central Bank and turned Saddam Hussein's regime
bills into confetti. The University of Mosul - the nation's second largest -
was ravaged. Looters helped themselves to computers and volumes from its
highly respected library. One man found an antique sword and brandished it
like a pirate.

Kurdish militiamen, too, carted away war booty: weapons, explosives and
anti-aircraft artillery among the haul.

"These are the victors' prizes," said a Kurdish commander, Mohammad Johar
Ishmail, as he looked over a small arsenal taken from an office of Saddam's
Baath Party. A large painting of a smiling Saddam was torn to shreds and
flapped in the breeze.

Late yesterday, residents came out of mosques following evening prayers and
began to take up arms and stop cars filled with looted goods, al-Jazeera
reported. Some clashed with the looters and seized looted property, taking
it to neighbourhood mosques.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Waltemeyer, the US special forces commander in
northern Iraq, said soldiers with the Iraqi 5th Corps had "melted into the
population." No formal surrender was signed, he said.

"We offered capitulation, but ... the Iraqi army evaporated, so there has
been no formal capitulation or cease-fire," Waltemeyer told a news
conference at an airbase in Mosul.

Later, after meeting with tribal and clan leaders, Waltemeyer announced a
curfew and said US forces would tolerate no looting or reprisals.

"Of all the areas in Iraq, Mosul stands the best chance at recovery, however
I cannot do this with just American forces. I need your help," Waltemeyer
told local leaders.

[.....]


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396736

*  KURDS BLAMED FOR CHAOS IN MOSUL
by Patrick Cockburn
The Independent, 13th April

American and Kurdish troops yesterday tightened their grip on Mosul, the
capital of northern Iraq, ending an orgy of looting that has gutted banks,
hotels and public offices.

However, there was still sporadic fighting. A prolonged burst of machine-gun
fire made a deafening noise outside the gates of the Republic Hospital just
as four men were lifting the body of a dead relative, wrapped in a white
shroud, on to a truck.

The driver of the truck, frightened by the firing, suddenly accelerated
away, leaving the mourners with the body, shaking their fists at the
disappearing vehicle.

About 700 US troops and a similar number of peshmerga, as Kurdish soldiers
are known, had moved into Mosul overnight, but the forces were still
stretched thin in this sprawling city of more than one million. Squads of
vigilantes, organised by the local mosques, had barricaded streets with
stones and set up checkpoints, on the lookout for looters.

In the Republic Hospital, the largest in the city, where many wounded were
still arriving, Dr Ayad Ramadhani, just appointed general director after his
predecessor fled, blamed the Kurds for the chaos in the city.

"The peshmerga and Kurdish militia were looting the city," he said. "It is
the civilians, who get their orders from the mosque, who are protecting it."

The capture by the Kurds of Mosul and Kirkuk, the two great cities of
northern Iraq, in a couple of days has deeply frightened the Arab
inhabitants. In the country many Arab villages are empty with only a few
ducks and dogs left behind, though the Kurds maintain that they will
distinguish between Arab settlers brought in by Saddam Hussein and Arabs who
always lived in this area.

Nervous peshmerga, mostly just arrived, were guarding the road to Mosul from
the south east, which had been reported as safe and had no blown bridges.
But as we got close to the city a Kurdish soldier at a checkpoint said:
"There are Arabs and Baath party men on the roofs of the houses down the
road and they are shooting." He advised us to instead to take a road through
some of the Christian villages.

Each checkpoint had its own rumour. At one, we were told that an Arab
suicide bomber had tried to kill some Americans and had been shot by them.
Another soldier was sure that the Imams in the mosques in Mosul had called
on the faithful to kill all peshmerga and foreigners.

At the last peshmerga checkpoint outside Mosul, where demoralising rumours
were rife, the large self-confident figure of Bruska Shaways, the deputy
commander of the military forces of the Kurdistan Democratic party, which
controls western Kurdistan, suddenly appeared. He admitted that the
situation had been bad but suggested it was getting better.

Mr Shaways told The Independent on Sunday that after the Iraqi army had
fallen apart there was chaos in Mosul, for which he blamed the Americans,
who wanted to restrain the official Kurdish peshmerga from entering Mosul.

He complained that the Americans "had said 'wait, wait', and it got later
and later, and there was chaos". Finally, they had gained US permission to
enter Mosul with the US troops.

It has all been very embarrassing for the Kurdish parties. Their surprise
capture of Mosul and Kirkuk has once again raised the spectre of a Turkish
invasion. Turkey had been told that the US alone would take and hold these
cities and not the Kurds.

Relations between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which
suddenly rushed into Kirkuk on Thursday, have also been strained.

Most of the Arab tribal leaders and dignitaries who turned up at the new US
base at Mosul airport said that they wanted to see the US troops get rid of
the looters.

The centre of the city was fast becoming empty, the pavements covered with
paper from all of the ransacked offices. Looters had also ravaged the Kirkuk
University campus, although some had heeded appeals by professors to at
least leave behind the technical books.

Not quite everybody was glad to see the Americans. At one checkpoint two had
raised the Stars and Stripes. Suddenly a man popped up nearby with a large
Iraqi flag. He was met with bursts of machine gunfire by peshmerga, who
thought he might be about to throw a grenade. But they missed him as he
fled.


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/apr/13/041307754.html

*  WAR BRINGS CASUALTIES TO IRAQI VILLAGE
by Brian Murphy
Las Vegas Sun, 13th April

FATHLIA, Iraq (AP): Follow the road down from the cinder blocks and concrete
slabs that were once a home. Pass the scorched olive trees and the young
spring wheat shoots mowed down by metal fragments. Step around the stones
covered with a deep crimson stain the villagers say is blood.

And you reach the wall.

Images etched in the soft mud brick depict the war in the uncluttered vision
of children. An Iraqi soldier, clutching his nation's flag, gawks wide-eyed
at a bat-shaped warplane unloading its missiles. Smaller figures are
running. A village - much like their own with olive groves and a mountain
ridge - is pictured at the far edge of the wall, safe from the attacks.

Coalition air strikes had roared around them for weeks. But, as in the
drawings, the explosions were always safely distant. Some days they would
hit Mosul, about nine miles to the southwest. Other times it was the Iraqi
front line positions on the far slopes of the mountains.

On Wednesday, it all changed. Air strikes turned to the Iraqi radar facility
just miles away, on the 3,300-foot peak known as Makloub. Then to suspected
Iraqi positions in the foothills. The war was coming to Fathlia.

"It was noise, smoke and terror," said a village elder, Saeed Mohammad
Yousef. "It was like Judgment Day."

There may never be a full reckoning of what happened that afternoon.

The village - ringed by centuries-old olive groves at the base of a long
treeless ridge - is an insignificant speck by any strategic measure. No one
even passes through. The lone dirt road to Fathlia is a dead end.

But now the village is joined with other communities across Iraq in a
question of international importance: the war's civilian casualty count, and
the contention that it arouses.

For opponents of war, the price in innocent blood was always a compelling
argument against invading Iraq. Once the bombs started falling, Saddam
Hussein's regime alleged they were targeting marketplaces and homes.
Coalition forces said they aimed only at military targets.

"Members of this coalition go literally to extraordinary lengths in order to
be able to be precise in our targeting" to avoid civilians, Gen. Tommy
Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, said early in the war.

Iraqi casualties, military and civilian, were treated by coalition doctors
in the field and on Navy hospital ships.

In Mosul, Iraq's third biggest city, physicians at the three main hospitals
- Saddam General, Jumhuriya and Ibn Sina Teaching Hospital - told The
Associated Press they treated a total of at least 200 people for apparent
bombing-related injuries. These are the survivors. At least 70 others either
died during treatment or arrived dead, they said.

"Who knows how many people were hurt that didn't come to the hospitals. We
can only guess," said Dr. Mohammad Suleyman, a surgeon at Saddam General
Hospital, which is considering a new name of Azadi, or Liberation.

On Wednesday - under a dazzling clear sky - warplanes opened a decisive
offensive against the Makloub redoubt. It was seen as the linchpin of the
Mosul defenses and a critical hub of Iraqi air defenses in the north.
Coalition attacks on the summit were precise and devastating. Communications
towers and buildings were piles of smoldering junk by the time Kurdish
fighters, backed by U.S. Special Forces, arrived early Thursday as the Iraqi
troops fled to the lowlands.

But there was no escape there either. The bombing also targeted the slopes
toward the Mosul plain. Saddam's northern defenses were in tatters. Within
48 hours, Mosul and the other key northern center, Kirkuk, would be in
coalition hands.

The people in Fathlia insist there was no Iraqi military presence in the
village of about 2,000 people. The closest troops, they claim, were in
bunkers along the arrow-straight road to Mosul about three miles away.

The villagers described a series of explosions hitting Fathlia and moving
toward the main road. It can't be proven whether they were coalition bombs.
Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles were also pumped into the air.

Villagers, however, have no doubts.

"We saw the planes, then the bombs came," said Mousab Zuber, a teacher. "We
thought the war was against Saddam Hussein, not us. My heart is happy
because Saddam is gone. But I cry for what happened here."

The children were in one of their favorite play spots: among the old olive
trees around the last house before the foothills. They would climb the
corkscrew trunks during hide-and-go seek or pretend they were newborn duck
chicks trailing after their mother.

Sometime after 4 p.m., villagers say, the sounds of play were replaced by
explosions and screams.

The house near the play site collapsed instantly, clouding the children in
gray dust. A mother, shielding her newborn son, miraculously slithered from
the rubble. She was badly injured, but the baby was fine.

The dust cleared, and the villagers describe a terrifying scene: 6-year-old
Hansa Mohammad Omar decapitated by a plate-size bomb fragment; her sister,
12-year-old Jasim, also dead; their friend, 10-year-old Ali Ramzi, crushed
against a tree.

In the next field, a 16-year-old shepherd, Abu Salam Abdul Gafur, was killed
along with most of his flock. At least 12 villagers, including a year-old
boy, were injured by the rain of rocks and hot metal that shattered windows
and cracked walls.

In the olive grove, two boys were gushing blood but still alive. The face
injuries were so severe that villagers had to mop up the blood with shirts
before they could identify the victims: two brothers, Zanalabedeen Abdullah,
8, and Qutaybah Abdullah, 7.

Shrapnel tore into Zanalabedeen's liver and colon. He underwent immediate
surgery at Saddam General to stop hemorrhaging. Qutaybah's skull was
fractured, but the shrapnel missed critical brain areas by a paper-thin
margin. Metal shards pierced his cheek and tongue.

Their mother, Balkees Saleh, has rarely left their bedside. She whispers
soothing words and brushes away the flies.

"They should fully recover - physically," said Dr. Salim Mohammad Yacoub,
their uncle, who was on duty at Saddam General when the boys arrived. "What
mental scars they will have, I cannot say."

Next to the boys is the bed of a 40-year-old teacher, Ishmail Denou, who was
left paralyzed in both legs after a bomb fragment severed part of his spine.

Yacoub thought long before giving an answer to the question: was it worth
it?

He began with a story. From 1982 to 1984, he was jailed by Saddam's regime,
he said. The crime was his brother's: fleeing the army and sneaking into
Syria. "But they punished me. This is the way they controlled us," he said.
"A person's action could bring harm to their relatives. It's a powerful
deterrent to opposition."

Then he told about Fathlia, his birthplace. Most villagers are ethnic Kurds,
but were forced to adopt Arab names and culture under Saddam's campaign to
dilute the influence of his old Kurdish foes in northern Iraq.

"Saddam made us live a lie," he said. "We could not even be proud of our
blood."

"So you ask if the war was worth it? Was it worth it to get rid of Saddam?"
he continued. "When history is written, I'm sure the answer will be yes. But
we do not live our lives in history books. We live our lives with our
families and friends. There are many fresh graves in our country now. There
is a collective pain that will last a long time."

In the cemetery in Fathlia on the edge of the olive groves, the earth on
four new burial mounds dries in the spring sun. The biggest is for a lanky
teenager. The smallest, for a 6 year-old who had just lost her first tooth.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2951789.stm

*  US ADMITS MOSUL KILLINGS
BBC, 16th April

A US commander has admitted that American troops did shoot and kill a number
of Iraqis during a protest in the northern city of Mosul.

Brigadier-General Vince Brooks said US marines and special forces soldiers
fired at demonstrators on Tuesday after they came under attack from people
shooting guns and throwing rocks.

"Fire was indeed delivered from coalition forces, it was lethal fire and
some Iraqis were killed as a result, we think the number is in the order of
seven and we think there were some wounded as well," he said.

A BBC correspondent in the city says Mosul is extremely tense - and latest
reports from there say at least three people have been killed and several
others wounded by gunfire.

The French news agency quotes an Iraqi police officer as saying the police
fired into the air to disperse looters who were trying to rob a bank.

Eyewitnesses said US troops then fired on a crowd close to the building from
nearby rooftops.

US forces had earlier denied responsibility for the killings on Tuesday.

Witnesses said US troops fired into a crowd growing increasingly hostile to
a speech being given by the town's newly appointed governor.

A US spokesman said troops were returning fire from a nearby building and
did not aim into the crowd.

The incident underlines the difficulties US forces face in trying to keep
the peace in a country now confronting an uncertain future.

Some reports suggest up to 15 people were killed in Mosul, with between 60
and 100 people injured.

The trouble began as an angry crowd gathered outside the governor's
building, demanding that Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Americans leave the
city, witnesses told the BBC.

The city's population is dominated by Sunni Arabs fiercely opposed to
Kurdish control.

Mosul's new governor, Mashaan al-Juburi - an Arab associated with the
peshmerga - appears to have tried to pacify the crowd.

"He said everything would be restored, water, electricity, and that the
Americans [were democratic]," Marwan Mohammed told AFP.

"The Americans [troops] were turning around the crowd. The people moved
toward the government building, the children threw stones, the Americans
started firing. Then they prevented the people from recovering the bodies,"
he said.

But this account was contradicted by another witness who told the BBC the
first shooting sounded like it came from a light weapon - "a Kalashnikov,
not like the weapons Americans have".

Details are also emerging of revenge attacks which apparently took place in
the days following the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kirkuk, also in the
north of the country.

The human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, which has just been on a
four-day visit to the city, says Baath party officials were the targets of
reprisal killings.

At least 40 people died in such attacks, the organisation says.

"They got caught out in clashes between [the withdrawing Iraqi government]
and mainly armed civilians," said Hania Mufti, a member of the delegation
visiting the city.

"Some of them died in these clashes. Others were wounded, but then they were
dragged out and shot dead."

The organisation has also expressed concern over the plight of about 2,000
Arabs who say they were forced to leave their villages around Kirkuk.

They were settled there in the 1970s as part of the Iraqi Government's
campaign to "Arabise" an area which had previously belonged to Kurds.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, has condemned any
attacks on Arabs by Kurds, and appealed for all Iraqi "brothers" to
"safeguard the spirit of peaceful and fraternal coexistence".


http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2577039

*  U.S. SAYS SHOT SEVEN IRAQIS IN MOSUL PROTESTS
Reuters, 16th April

[.....]

In a sign that the city was still plagued by law and order problems, Juburi
said three people were killed during Wednesday's botched bank robbery.

Jazeera quoted an Iraqi policeman as saying police fired shots in an attempt
to stop the robbery and, in the confusion, U.S. troops fired back in their
direction.

The Arabic-language station said the four bank robbers were killed and 11
wounded.

It showed pictures of two children hurt in the shootout, both of whom said
they came under American fire.

"The Americans started to hit us and we went into the shops and they chased
us there," said one of the children from a hospital bed.

Juburi said that despite Wednesday's incident the city of more than 1
million people was now safe.

"There is security, electricity, water, policemen. I am standing next to the
fire brigade, they do not have any work because we have put out all the
fires," he said.

"Things are back to normal, 90 percent of those who looted came from the
outskirts of the city, not the city center."

A Reuters team left Mosul Saturday after shooting broke out near the team's
car twice in the space of 20 minutes. (Additional reporting by Dania Saadi
in Dubai and John Chalmers in Qatar)


http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1348428,00.html

*  MOSUL COMMANDER SPEAKS
News 24 (South Africa), 16th April

Mosul, Sapa, AFP: The Iraqi commander in charge of defending the northern
city of Mosul put down his arms reluctantly and only after most of his men
had disbanded in the face of certain defeat by US and Kurdish forces.

In an interview on Tuesday, the commander, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said he and the 200 troops under his command were not part of the
surrender negotiated between the Iraqi 5th Corps in the town and US troops
prior to their entry into Mosul on Friday.

The bulk of troops in the town disbanded peacefully on Thursday following a
a deal negotiated by Mosul's influential Arab tribal chiefs with US-backed
Iraqi opposition and Kurdish forces, assuring the safety of Saddam Hussein's
troops.

"No one ordered me to put down my arms. I was alone facing massive forces
and my soldiers were already gone. It was impossible to oppose US, Kurdish
and Iraqi (opposition) forces," said the high ranking commander.

"I was not going to fight a lost battle and I knew the Americans would
protect us" under the informal accord negotiated by Arab tribal leaders, he
said.

He added that he had done nothing to force his men to fight or hold their
positions. They eventually disbanded, taking refuge with local families and
in schools in the Arab-majority town, traditionally loyal to Saddam.

"They were very affected by the air bombings. But we officers did everything
the government wanted, Saddam Hussein is our president," added the
52-year-old, who has given 33 years of his life to army service.

He refused to discuss Saddam's notorious punishment squads, which reportedly
forced soldiers to defend the dying regime.

Though he is "sad" the regime collapsed, the commander admitted he was
disillusioned with the military strategy adopted by the Iraqi leadership.

"High-ranking Iraqi officers were shocked by Saddam Hussein's bad evaluation
of the state of his army, which was a weak force unable to resist a
superpower. He should have given up. We knew the army could not put up a
defense, but Saddam Hussein took decisions without listening to anyone," he
said.

"We stayed until the end because it was our duty," he added, expressing
satisfaction US troops did not kill the Iraqi forces that stepped down.

Part of the deal negotiated by the tribal chiefs included appointing
prominent Iraqi opposition leader Mashaan al-Juburi as the new governor of
the town. Juburi along with Iraqi opposition and Kurdish forces took control
of Mosul on Thursday, the governor said.

Juburi said on Monday he had told Iraqi troops to go home and guaranteed
their safety ahead of the entry of US forces.

Ahmed Salem, a soldier stationed at the Gayar airbase 25km north of Mosul,
abandoned his position on April 7, two days before Baghdad fell to coalition
forces.

"Our morale was totally smashed. For us, being a soldier was like being a
prisoner. Officers were ruthless, they cut off the ears of soldiers and
treated us like dogs. The regime paid us one dollar a month," he said.

During the war, "the Americans did not aim at soldiers but bases. Once the
air sirens went off, we would get away from the base. Once two American
helicopters overflew us but did not shoot."

Salem said that of 3 500 troops initially stationed at his base, the bulk
deserted leaving only 22. "Every day, small groups would desert. In the end,
only the officers stayed. For them, it is harder to desert."

Kurdish forces over the weekend began withdrawing from Mosul and the other
key oil city of Kirkuk, and being replaced by US forces, allaying Turkish
fears that Kurdish control of the two cities would boost the prospects for
Kurdish independence.


MEDIA WAR

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c
=StoryFT&cid=1048313608206&p=1012571727172

*  JUBILANT SCENES NOT SHOWN ON SYRIAN TV
by Kim Ghattas in Damascus
Financial Times, 9th April

After three weeks of almost round-the-clock coverage of the war in Iraq,
Syrian state television on Wednesday remained strangely mute over the
drastic developments in Baghdad.

The talk shows debating the "American-British imperialistic war on Iraq"
disappeared and news bulletins were short, focusing mostly on continued
condemnation of the war around the world and the humanitarian consequences
of the conflict.

Unlike most other television networks, including Arabic satellite channels,
Syria's own network showed none of the pictures of jubilant Iraqis, some
trampling on pictures of Saddam Hussein. The only pictures from Baghdad were
of looting as Syrian anchors described scenes of chaos caused by a "few
scattered elements".

Syrians turned to satellite channels for news and young men watching the Al
Jazeera network expressed disbelief at what was unfolding on the screen.

"This is very bad, Americans in Iraq, very bad," said one man who gave his
name as Ammar. "We thought there would be more resistance, Basra took two
weeks and now Baghdad, gone just like that. We are very disappointed."

There was no immediate official reaction to the developments in Iraq. Syria
has been opposed to the war and warned against the consequences for the
Iraqi people.

There have been fears in Damascus that Syria could be next on Washington's
target list - fears stoked by US administration officials warning Syria to
stop supporting the regime of Mr Hussein and terrorist organisations.
Hundreds of Arab volunteers, including Syrians, made their way through Syria
to Baghdad to fight against US troops.

Syria has now responded positively to a US request asking it to stop the
crossing into Iraq of Arab volunteers, according to Richard Armitage, US
assistant secretary of state.

"We will not attack Syria," he said.

In the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, in the suburbs of the Syrian capital,
angry and frustrated young men said the jihad, or holy fight, against the
Americans would continue, an ominous warning that volunteers in Iraq would
not give up so easily, even if Mr Hussein's regime had crumbled.

"It is every Muslim's duty to fight against Americans on Arab land," said
25-year-old Mohammed Hassanein.


http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,933048,00.html

*  'WE WERE ALMOST LYNCHED', SAY JOURNALISTS
by Ciar Byrne
The Guardian, 9th April

A group of Portuguese journalists has described how they were beaten and
robbed by an armed Iraqi lynch mob in central Baghdad today. Carlos Fino of
Portuguese public broadcaster Radio Televisao Portuguesa said the
journalists escaped with cuts and bruises.

A reporter from Bulgaria was also with the six Portuguese journalists.

"We were almost lynched," Fino said on RTP, adding a man armed with a
Kalashnikov rifle shot at the tyres of the journalists' cars.

The reporters were dragged from their vehicles and a crowd surrounded them.
Some people were carrying knives and others punched and struck the
journalists with their rifle butts.

People in the crowd stole television equipment, money and some personal
belongings, Fino said.

Several men, apparently Iraqi officials, arrived at the scene and allowed
the journalists to leave in their vehicles, he added.

Sky News correspondent David Chater earlier reported how the group narrowly
escaped the attack.

"Journalists have got into trouble, cameras have been stolen, they've been
beaten up, their passports have been taken," he said.

"A Portuguese TV crew got about two blocks and were then fired at. They got
away with their lives."

Chater outlined an extremely precarious situation for foreign media
stationed in and around the Palestine Hotel, which yesterday came under fire
from a US tank.

Despite the presence of coalition troops only streets away, the area still
appears to be under the control of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"There's no sense of freedom here, in fact quite the opposite. The front
line is squeezing in around us. There's a sense of danger.

"It's getting pretty dangerous for the remaining press, because there are
armed men around, there are people taking cameras off us.

"The marines are six blocks down that way. We're awaiting their arrival
pretty anxiously."

Chater pointed to a nearby mosque, where he said Fedayeen militia had taken
up positions armed with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades.

"This is a small island where we don't really know what's happening. There's
a lot of concern among journalists about what's going to happen, who's going
to come down that road there. If they reach us before the American marines
do then we're in trouble," Chater warned.


http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia/story/0,12823,933188,00.html

*  SPANISH JOURNALISTS SNUB STRAW
by Ciar Byrne
The Guardian, 9th April

Spanish journalists today snubbed Spain's prime minister and Britain's
foreign secretary in protest at the death of the Spanish TV cameraman who
was killed by a US tank shell in Baghdad.

At a speech at Madrid's senate today, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
expressed his condolences for Jose Couso, a journalist working for Spanish
TV network Tele 5 who was killed at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, and for
Julio Anguito Parrado, a Spanish journalist killed on Monday when an Iraqi
missile hit a US military base south of Baghdad.

However, between 30 and 40 journalists present boycotted the speech by
downing their cameras, microphones and notebooks and standing in stony
silence.

Also today about 20 Spanish journalists walked out of a press conference in
Paris with Jack Straw and his Spanish counterpart, Ana Palacio, after just
one question.

A colleague of Couso at Tele 5 asked Ms Palacio about reports that US forces
had declared the Palestine Hotel a military target 48 hours before the blast
that killed Couso and Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk.

The hotel has been the centre for most of the foreign media in the Iraqi
capital throughout the war.

Ms Palacio was evasive, referring the questioner to comments by the Spanish
defence minister, Federico Trillo, who recommended last night that Spanish
journalists should leave Baghdad because the city had grown too dangerous.

But she said Spain was determined to press the US for a thorough
investigation, saying: "I've been told there circumstances that were at the
least surprising."

Mr Aznar was targeted again in the afternoon in the lower chamber of Spain's
parliament as he arrived for a weekly question-and-answer session with the
opposition.

A dozen photographers, who usually gather round to film him taking his seat,
suddenly turned their backs on the prime minister and held up enlarged
photos of Couso. Opposition politicians clapped at the gesture.

Hundreds of journalists also protested on outside the US embassy in Madrid.

Mr Straw declared today he was "very concerned" about the killing of
journalists in Iraq and said he would demand a detailed account about US
attacks on the Palestine Hotel and the offices of two Arabic television
stations in Baghdad.

"I haven't had a detailed report but I'm going to ask for one this morning
about the precise circumstances of these deaths," Mr Straw said.

"Of course, I'm very concerned indeed about the deaths of the journalists,
as I am about the deaths of all innocent people in this conflict," he added.

The US military has given differing accounts of why one of its tanks fired
on the journalists' hotel, initially suggesting there was enemy sniper fire
coming from the building, and later claiming enemy binoculars had been
spotted.

However, journalists on the scene yesterday said they had not heard any
gunfire coming from the hotel and one Associated Press photographer
questioned how the military could have seen enemy binoculars and not
journalists' camera lenses.


http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic
le_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035780699736&call_pageid=968332188854&col=9683500607
24

*  WERE THESE DEATHS MISHAP, OR MURDER?
by Robert Fisk
Toronto Star, from The Independent, 9th April

Baghdad‹First the Americans killed the correspondent for Al-Jazeera
yesterday and wounded his cameraman.

Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters Television bureau in
Baghdad and killed one of its cameramen, father of an 8-year old son, and
wounded three other staff members. Also fatally wounded was a cameraman for
the Spanish television network Telecinco.

Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the
right word for these killings ‹ the first with a jet aircraft, the second
with an Abrams tank ‹ was murder?

These are not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American
invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead in southern Iraq by
American troops who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle.

Michael Kelly of the Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two
reporters have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists ‹ a German and a Spaniard
‹ were killed Monday night at a U.S. base in Baghdad, along with two U.S.
soldiers, when an Iraqi missile exploded among them.

Nor should we forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by
the hundreds.

So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the
Americans, they make it look very like murder.

The U.S. jet turned to rocket Al-Jazeera's office on the banks of the Tigris
at 7:45 a.m. local time.

Their chief correspondent in Baghdad, a Jordanian-Palestinian named Tareq
Ayyoub, was on the roof with his second cameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir,
reporting a pitched battle near the bureau between American and Iraqi
troops.

As Ayyoub's colleague Maher Abdullah recalled, both men saw the plane fire
the rocket as it swooped toward their building, which is close to the
Jamahiriya Bridge upon which two U.S. tanks had just appeared.

"The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would
land on the roof ‹ that's how close it was," Abdullah said. "We actually
heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit, the missile actually
exploded against our electrical generator. Tareq died almost at once. Zuheir
was injured."

Now for America's problems in explaining this little saga.

Back in 2001, the U.S. fired a cruise missile at Al-Jazeera's office in
Kabul, from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the
world.

No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night
before the city's "liberation." Al-Jazeera's Kabul correspondent, Tasir
Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Alouni was in
the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the U.S. Air Force's second attack on
Al-Jazeera.

Far more disturbing, however, is the fact that the Al-Jazeera network, the
freest Arab television station and one which has incurred the fury of both
the Americans and the Iraqi authorities for its live coverage of the war,
gave the Pentagon the co-ordinates of its Baghdad office two months ago and
received its assurances that the bureau in Iraq would not be attacked.

Then on Monday, the U.S. State Department's spokesman in Doha, an
Arab-American called Nabil Khouri, visited Al-Jazeera's offices in the city
and, according to a source within the Qatari satellite channel, repeated the
Pentagon's assurances.

Within 24 hours, the Americans had fired their missile into the Baghdad
office.

The next assault ‹ on Reuters ‹ came just before midday when an Abrams tank
on the Jamahiriya Bridge suddenly pointed its gun barrel towards the
Palestine Hotel, where more than 200 foreign journalists are staying to
cover the war from the Iraqi side.

Sky Television's David Chater noticed the tank turret moving.

The French television channel France 3 had a crew in a neighbouring room and
videotaped the tank on the bridge. Their tape shows a bubble of fire
emerging from the tank gun's muzzle, the sound of a massive detonation, then
pieces of paint-work falling past the camera as it vibrates with the impact.

In the Reuters bureau on the 15th floor, the shell exploded. It mortally
wounded their Ukrainian cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, who was also filming the
tanks, seriously wounded another members of the staff, Briton Paul Pasquale,
and two other journalists, including Reuters' reporter Samia Nakhoul.

On the next floor, Telecinco's cameraman Jose Couso was also badly hurt and
later died.

The U.S. responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward
lie. Gen. Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division ‹ whose tanks were on
the bridge ‹ announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle
fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single
round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased.

The general's statement, however, was untrue.

I was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the
shell was fired and heard no shooting. The French videotape of the attack
runs for more than four minutes and records absolute silence before the tank
fires. And there were no snipers in the building.

Indeed, the dozens of journalists and crews living there have watched like
hawks to make sure that no armed men use the hotel as an assault point.

For Blount to suggest, as he clearly does, that the Reuters camera crew were
in some way involved in shooting at Americans ‹ that hostile fire was coming
from the Reuters office ‹ merely turns a meretricious statement into a
libellous one.

Again, we should remember that three dead and six wounded journalists do not
constitute a massacre, let alone the equivalence of the hundreds of
civilians being maimed by the invasion force. And it is a truth that needs
to be remembered that the Iraqi regime has killed a few journalists of its
own.

But something very dangerous appeared to be getting loose yesterday.

Is there some message that we reporters are supposed to learn from all this?
Is there some element in the American military that has come to hate the
press and wants to take out journalists based in Baghdad, to hurt those whom
(British) Foreign Secretary David Blunkett has maliciously claimed to be
working "behind enemy lines?"

Could it be that this claim ‹ that international correspondents are in
effect collaborating with Blunkett's enemy ‹ is turning into some kind of a
death sentence?

Samia Nakhoul has been a friend and colleague since the 1975-90 Lebanese
civil war. Yesterday, she lay covered in blood in a Baghdad hospital.

And Blount dared to imply that that this innocent woman and her brave
colleagues were snipers. What, I wonder, does this tell us about the war in
Iraq?


http://www.iht.com/articles/92949.html

*  THE AWFUL NEWS CNN HAD TO KEEP TO ITSELF
by Eason Jordan
International Herald Tribune, 12th April

ATLANTA: Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to keep
government permission for CNN's Baghdad bureau and to arrange interviews
with Iraqi leaders.

Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -
awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have
jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990s one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For
weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of
a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's
ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq
station chief.

CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the
torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him
killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no
protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international
press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate
reporting.

Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then
surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in
unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind
we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our
payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam's eldest son, Uday,
told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law
who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of
Jordan.

I was sure he would respond by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only
other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized
even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line
(one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did
so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few
months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon
killed.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me
that Saddam was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer
told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the
regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of
congratulations on the act to Saddam.

An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth. Henchmen had ripped
them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always
remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not
broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Mohammed Said Sahhaf that we
intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me
they would "suffer the severest possible consequences."

CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence
that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Arbil. This
included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi
intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel
actually housed CIA and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us
interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering
our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless
still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by
Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes" including
speaking with CNN on the phone.

They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January
1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull,
ripped out her brains and put them in a jar, and tore her body apart limb by
limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of
her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam's
regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales
from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told
freely.

The writer is chief news executive at CNN.


http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny
bzcnn0412,0,4619658.story?coll=ny%2Dentertainment%2Dheadlines

*  CNN WAS TARGET
by Verne Gay
Newsday, 12th April

In a bizarre plot that was designed to punish CNN for establishing a news
bureau in a Kurdish- held part of northern Iraq before the war began, Iraqi
agents had planned to blow up CNN offices there, the cable network reported.
A number of staffers, including veteran correspondent Brent Sadler, also
were apparently targeted.

Kurdish police officers uncovered the plot, but a CNN spokesman said it was
unclear Friday how close the Iraqis had been to carrying it out, or how the
plot had been foiled.

The network Friday aired what it described as videotaped confessions of two
Iraqi agents under interrogation, as well as pictures of detailed diagrams
of the CNN offices and adjoining roads. CNN opened the bureau in Erbil late
last year, and Iraqi officials threatened the network with expulsion from
Baghdad if it attempted to report from the Kurdish-held territory.

During an on-air interview Friday, Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive
who established the Erbil bureau, also said that one official warned him CNN
would suffer "the severest possible consequences" if it proceeded. A CNN
spokesman said Friday that at least a dozen staffers worked in the Erbil
office, housed in a hotel, and that the network had since learned from
security specialists that "a truck bomb would have breached the barriers and
everyone would have died."

Separately, CNN reported Friday that its reporter Kevin Sites, who has been
reporting from northern Iraq, was briefly detained by Iraqi militiamen who
threatened to kill him and his crew. Sites' translator intervened and the
group was later released.


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/apr/12/041206002.html

*  RADIO FREE IRAQ TO OPEN BAGHDAD BUREAU
by Karel Janicek
Las Vegas Sun, 12th April

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP): After 23 years in exile, Iraqi journalist
Kamran Al Karadaghi is finally going home.

Al-Karadaghi, 64, is longing to see his family, friends and home country
again. He's also looking forward to practicing his profession there. In
Prague, he is the chief editor and deputy director of Radio Free Iraq, a
division of the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that has
beamed broadcasts into Iraq since 1998.

Al-Karadaghi plans to establish a Baghdad bureau as soon as the city is safe
enough to return home. His mission will be to start from scratch and provide
something virtually unknown to his fellow citizens - radio broadcasting not
under the thumb of government.

"I feel quite relaxed at the moment, to be honest," he said. "No matter how
difficult it will be to rebuild Iraq, nothing can be really worse than the
regime of Saddam Hussein."

David Newton, Radio Free Iraq's director, said the station wants to expand
broadcasting to 24 hours a day. The station broadcast five hours a day
before the war and now is on the air for 10 hours.

Al-Karadaghi, 64, a Kurd born in the northern town of Sulaymaniyah, left his
country in 1980 and worked as a journalist for various London-based Arabic
media.

He joined Radio Free Iraq in Prague as it was launched by the U.S. Congress.
During his time in exile, he never contacted his relatives directly, to
avoid putting them at risk.

The station's team, consisting of nine full-time journalists, was recently
strengthened by another four. Its journalists will face a difficult task in
Iraq, Newton said, because most reporters there "never heard about
objectivity and different sources."

Al-Karadaghi is looking forward to the challenge.

"We hope to be able to really be helpful and to give an example how free and
objective broadcasting should be," he said. "We hope our work will be
recognized."


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2003/apr/13/041308040.html

*  TWO IN CNN CREW HURT IN IRAQI GUNFIGHT
by David Bauder
Las Vegas Sun, 13th April

NEW YORK (AP) - An armed guard protecting a CNN crew engaged in a brief
gunfight with Iraqi forces while speeding through a checkpoint near Tikrit
on Sunday. Two people in the CNN convoy were slightly injured.

Correspondent Brent Sadler had driven through Tikrit, one of the last
strongholds of Saddam Hussein loyalists, in a seven-vehicle CNN convoy when
they decided to leave because they could feel "hostility rising," he said.

They were fired upon with automatic weapons while just outside of Tikrit, he
said. An Iraqi Kurd guard traveling with the CNN crew returned fire as the
vehicles sped away.

CNN repeatedly ran video of the incident on Sunday that showed the roadside
passing by from the car's perspective, then the rapid-fire sound of guns and
the camera being pointed to the sky as its operator ducked for cover.

"These shots weren't intended to scare us," Sadler later said. "They were
intended to kill us."

The guard was grazed by a bullet, said Matthew Furman, CNN spokesman. A CNN
producer was hit by shattered glass.

It was part of a busy day for CNN on Sunday. The network aired exclusive
video gathered by correspondent Bob Franken's crew of seven American POWs
unexpectedly released by Iraqis.

The gunfight involving Sadler's guard was believed to be the first time
armed protectors of a CNN crew had to use a weapon. Most journalists adhere
to Geneva Conventions rules that reporters not openly carry weapons in war
zones, although several news organizations have hired armed guards for
protection in dangerous areas.

In all, 10 employees of news organizations have been killed in combat
situations in Iraq since the war began March 20.

CNN noted that Sadler was in a convoy clearly marked as containing
journalists and that the Iraqis fired first. In a dangerous place for
reporters, CNN supports what its guard did, Furman said.

While not passing judgment on what happened, media ethics expert Bob Steele
said news organizations must consider the danger that such an incident can
heighten the risk for all journalists that they will be considered a hostile
force in a time of war.

"It may be a justifiable risk," said Steele, director of the ethics program
for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. "But it's a risk that must be
considered on the front-end before a dangerous situation takes place and
potential consequences play out."

Joel Campagna, Mideast program director for the New York-based Committee to
Protect Journalists, couldn't recall another incident where a reporter's
guard had to fire his weapon.

"Journalists pose the question of whether they should sacrifice their
security for the perception of neutrality. I don't know the answer to that,"
he said.

It was the second harrowing experience for a CNN correspondent near Tikrit
in three days. On Friday, correspondent Kevin Sites and his crew were held
captive for several hours by Iraqi Fedayeen at a checkpoint.

Sites and his crew were accused of being American spies and threatened with
death. His hands were bound behind his back and an AK-47 round fired at his
feet. They were released after negotiations between the crew's translator
and village elders, he said.




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