"The US-British war machine is making journalists in Baghdad a target to suppress the truth about the barbaric massacres they have carried out against the Iraqi people," the USJ alleged in a statement.

On Tuesday, a cameraman with the Reuters news agency was killed and four other media employees wounded when a US tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, where foreign journalists are staying, and Tareq Ayub, 34, of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera Arabic television network, died and one of his colleagues was injured after a missile strike on the station's Baghdad offices.

"The USJ condemns the fact that the US-British invasion forces are making Arab and foreign journalists who are covering the war in Iraq a target ... because they are showing the world the bombardments and destruction aimed at unarmed civilians," the union's statement added.

Syria has strongly opposed the US-led war against its neighbour.

SPACE.WIRE