Two cameramen, one from the Reuters news agency and the other working for Spanish television station Telecinco, were killed after a US tank fired Tuesday on the Palestine Hotel where most foreign journalists are based.

Tareq Ayub, a correspondent for Arabic television network Al-Jazeera, was also killed when a US missile crashed earlier in the day into the station's offices.

In a letter to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, IPI director Johann Fritz described the shelling as "indiscriminate and taken with complete disregard for the lives of the journalists living and working in the Palestine Hotel."

Fritz also criticised US officials for describing as "unilateral" journalists working outside the structure set in place by the allied forces for "embedded" journalists.

"IPI views this as a fundamental misstatement," he said. "Under international obligations the allied forces in Iraq must do everything possible to ensure journalists' safety whether "embedded" or "unilateral."

Frits asked Rumsfeld "to undertake all possible precautionary measures to guarantee the safety and protection of journalists" and to open an enquiry into the Palestine Hotel attack.

The US Defense Department has said the deaths were "tragic" but laid the blame on the Iraqi regime for putting civilians at risk.

Eleven journalists and a Kurdish translator working for the BBC have been killed since the war began on March 20.

SPACE.WIRE