A television journalist was shot dead as he made a live broadcast from Baghdad yesterday when United States helicopters fired on a crowd that had gathered round the burning wreckage of an American armoured vehicle.
Mazen al-Tumeizi, a Palestinian working for Al-Arabiya, one of the main Arab satellite television channels, was among 12 people - all believed to be civilians - killed in the incident on Haifa Street.
TV reporter killed by US fire during live Baghdad broadcast
Tell me again why they hate us? Oh, I remember: it's because we love freedom.
I learned about this from the ABC evening news. They showed a reporter talking in front of an incapacitated US armored vehicle with people swarmed around it; then an explosion with the camera flying to the ground; then, when the camera's picked up, you can see the reporter's blood on the lens.
Well, now we know why Bremer made one of the conditions of the "handover" of power that no US military personnel are to be subject to Iraqi law, as if the reason wasn't obvious from the very beginning.
I bet again there's not going to be so much a squeak out of American politicians, editorial writers, or columnists.
And where is the UN General Assembly? Why doesn't it condemn the US?
Update [2004-9-13 15:59:38 by Alexander]: Patrick Cockburn of the Independent has a story about this:
"I am a journalist. I'm dying, I'm dying," screamed Mazen al-Tumeizi, a correspondent for the Arabic television channel al-Arabiya, after shrapnel from a rocket fired by an American helicopter interrupted his live broadcast and slammed into his back.
Twelve others were killed and 61 wounded by rockets from two US helicopters on Haifa Street in central Baghdad. They had fired into a crowd milling around a burning Bradley fighting vehicle that had been hit by a rocket or bomb hours before...
"The helicopter fired on the Bradley to destroy it after it had been hit earlier and it was on fire," said Major Phil Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division. "It was for the safety of the people around it."
US missile attack kills 13 civilians in Iraq
Update [2004-9-14 7:50:34 by Alexander]:Paul Krugman starts today's op-ed with this story.