CAIRO, 10 April 2003 — Arab media accused the United States yesterday of intentionally “killing the witnesses” in angry condemnation of attacks in which three journalists died in Baghdad. Egyptian newspapers said US firing on a Baghdad hotel packed with journalists and on the offices of two popular Arab satellite television stations was aimed at muzzling independent media coverage of the US-led assault on the Iraqi capital.
“Black day for the press. Three martyrs, a number of wounded and a siege to silence the Arab satellite channels,” the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat said in a banner headline, calling the attacks a war crime. Two cameramen from Reuters and a Spanish TV channel, as well as a journalist of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television, were killed in separate attacks. Three Reuters staff were wounded.
US military spokesmen have said a tank fired a single shell at the Palestine Hotel after troops came under fire and they regretted any casualties. Journalists at the hotel said they heard no firing from the hotel. “Baghdad massacres discredit the invaders, despite the killing of the witnesses,” Egypt’s semi-official Al-Gomhuria wrote in a front-page headline.
Al-Akhbar, another mainstream daily, quoted Cairo University communications professor Mona El-Hadidi as saying the attacks on journalists were “an attempt to cover up the atrocities being committed by the allies”. She said the United States had knowingly attacked “the hotel in Baghdad where journalists of all races were sheltering from the continuous air bombardment of the Iraqi capital”.
Commentator Mohammed Amin said Washington was out to silence Arab broadcasters who had given an objective picture of Iraqi suffering in the war.
“The invading forces have succeeded in imposing a media blackout on its massacres in Iraq but they were not able to cut the tongues of Arab media. Thus, it targeted them with brutal attacks,” he wrote in the opposition Al-Wafd Arabic daily. Al-Ahrar, another Egyptian opposition daily, called the attack “a massacre of journalists”.
Spanish journalists held a silent protest after two of their colleagues died in Iraq downing the tools of their trade as Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar arrived in the Senate in Madrid yesterday. Journalists piled television equipment, cameras, tape recorders and notepads in front of the room where Aznar was to meet with officials from his ruling Popular Party (PP).
The head of Jordan’s press union yesterday led an angry march to denounce the death of a Jordanian journalist killed in a US missile strike in Baghdad, which his father said was an attack on press freedom. “My son is a martyr who was killed as a result of America’s so-called civilization in an attack on press freedom,” said Naeem Ayub, whose son Tareq was killed in Baghdad. “They are attacking journalists to hide the truth,” Naeem Ayub said, as he held up his son’s one-year-old daughter Fatima, with tears running down his face.
