In two separate incidents, US attacks on the Iraqi capital killed three television journalists from Al-Jazeera, Reuters and Telecinco.

A US missile crashed into the offices of Al-Jazeera in downtown Baghdad, killing Tareq Ayub, a correspondent with the Arabic news channel, and wounding one of its cameramen.

Taras Protsyuk, a Ukranian cameraman with the Reuters news agency, and Jose Couso, who worked for Telecinco Spanish televison, died after a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, where the foreign media are based. Three other Reuter staffers were injured.

After the first incident, an Al-Jazeera presenter quickly accused US forces on live television of "intentionally targeting" the channel's offices, recalling the US bombing of its Kabul bureau during the 2001 US war in Afghanistan.

The editor-in-chief of the maverick network, which has come under sharp criticism from the United States and Britain over its coverage of the Iraq war, later asked for help from the coalition forces to get its reporters out of Baghdad.

"I believe that none of them is safe any more, whether in Baghdad or the rest of Iraq, even those who are with American troops," said Ibrahim Hilal.

In Qatar, the US military command denied taking aim at al-Jazeera's offices and said it had cautioned journalists from the start that working from Baghdad would be risky during the war.

"Central command has repeatedly warned media representatives that Baghdad would be a dangerous place to be if the coalition engaged the Iraqi regime in combat," it said in a statement.

The Pentagon said it was saddened by media deaths in the Iraq war, but defended the US tank crew that fired at the Baghdad hotel, saying they acted in self-defense after being fired on.

Al-Jazeera's offices, on the road between the Mansur Hotel and the planning ministry, are not far from the Republican Palace compound where fierce fighting raged between US and Iraqi troops Tuesday.

In the second incident, a US commander said an American tank shot a single round at the Palestine hotel after it was fired upon.

General Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division said: "The tank was receiving fire from the hotel, RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) and small-arms fire, and engaged with one tank round. The firing stopped."

Reuters editor in chief Geert Linnebank criticized US forces for firing on the hotel.

"Taras's death, and the injuries sustained by the others, were so unnecessary," Linnebank said from the agency's London headquarters.

He called into question the "judgment of advancing US troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad."

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemned the hotel attack as a possible war crime.

"There is no doubt at all that these attacks could be targeting journalists. If so, they are grave and serious violations of international law," said IFJ general secretary Aidan White.

"The bombing of hotels where journalists are staying and targeting of Arab media are particularly shocking events in a war which is being fought in the name of democracy," he said.

The Brussels-based lobby group also accused the Iraqi regime of using journalists and other civilians as "human shields," and demanded that both sides in the war be punished under international law.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, in an open letter to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, demanded an immediate inquiry into the media deaths.

Both Spain and Portugal called on journalists from their countries to leave Baghdad immediately, while European Union officials said they would make representations to the United States to provide greater protection to journalists covering the conflict.

Foreign journalists working from the Palestine hotel are under the strict watch of Iraqi authorities, as opposed to Al-Jazeera and rival Abu Dhabi television of the United Arab Emirates which have their own offices and more freedom of movement.

Abu Dhabi TV aired harrowing live footage Tuesday showing its camera position under attack.

As they filmed the arrival of two US tanks on a major bridge in central Baghdad close to their offices overlooking the river, what appeared to be Iraqi machinegun fire clattered out from just beneath the camera position.

Since the start of the war on March 20, Arabic channels have been in particularly fierce competition to present the latest from Iraq, jostling to fill the gap left by the absence of major US channels such as CNN, whose team was expelled by Iraq at the start of the hostilities.

SPACE.WIRE