Telecinco said Jose Couso, 37, suffered injuries to his jaw and right leg and died at the Saint Raphael hospital while undergoing surgery.

"Couso was with the station's correspondent Jon Sistiaga working on the war coverage when he was wounded by an explosion in the hotel where a large number of the foreign media are staying," the station said in a statement.

The shell fired at the Palestine Hotel also killed a Reuters cameraman from Ukraine, 35-year-old Taras Protsyuk, and wounded three other journalists working for the British news agency.

A defense ministry spokesman later told AFP the government was advising all Spanish journalists to leave the Iraqi capital.

Defense Minister Federico Trillo told Spanish media officials that Baghdad's Palestine hotel had been declared a "military target" 48 hours ago by coalition forces, who maintained it was serving as a meeting place for Iraqi officials, the spokesman said.

He stressed that the coalition had advised journalists staying at the hotel of the possibility the building could be targeted.

A defense ministry spokesman earlier said that Madrid would seek an explanation from Washington after the death of the cameraman.

The spokesman said a Spanish general currently in Kuwait to pave the way for the arrival of humanitarian aid from his country would take up the matter with US military officials stationed there.

General Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, earlier confirmed at Baghdad airport that a single US tank round had been fired at the hotel, in response to what he called rocket and small-arms fire from inside.

Couso, who was married with two children, is the 12th member of a media organization to die while covering the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein.

Julio Anguita Parrado, a war correspondent of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, was one of two journalists killed in Baghdad Monday.

SPACE.WIRE