"It is with great sadness that we learned of the tragic death of Taras Protsyuk, one of the innocent victims of this conflict in Iraq," Zlenko wrote in a letter to the family, his spokesman told AFP.

Protsyuk, a 35-year-old cameraman who had worked for British news agency Reuters since 1993, was killed when a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

Protsyuk, a native of western Ukraine, was one of three journalists killed Tuesday as fighting raged in Baghdad.

"His death is all the more bitter since I personally knew Taras -- he was a great professional," spokesman Markian Loubkivski quoted Zlenko's letter as saying.

Protsyuk moved to Warsaw, Poland after being based in Kiev and had covered the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan. He leaves a wife and an eight-year-old son.

Jose Couso, a cameraman with Spanish television channel Telecinco, also died from wounds suffered in the attack on the Palestine Hotel, which houses most of the foreign journalists in Baghdad. Three other Reuters journalists were injured in the attack.

In a separate attack earlier Tuesday, an Al-Jazeera journalist Tareq Ayub was killed when a missile struck the Qatar-based television channel's Baghdad headquarters.

Tuesday's deaths brought to at least 12 the number of journalists and media staff killed since the US-led war in Iraq began on March 20.

SPACE.WIRE