Reporters Sans Frontiers (Reporters Without Borders) was reacting after a television crew from the US news channel CNN came under fire twice Sunday when they ventured into Tikrit, northern Iraq, the last major Iraqi city outside US control.

Armed bodyguards fired back to protect the crew in dramatic scenes shown live on the channel, but RSF said it was "against all the rules of the profession" and set a "dangerous precedent".

It said in a statement that CNN had hired a private security firm to protect its journalists, voicing "concern at such behaviour which introduces a new practice contrary to all professional rules.

"Such an attitude creates a dangerous precedent which risks endangering all other reporters covering this conflict as well as others in the future.

"There is a real risk that the belligerants will imagine from now on that press vehicles are armed," said RSF secretary general Robert Menard.

"Journalists can and must use means to guarantee their security such as moving around in armoured vehicles and wearing bullet-proof vests, but resorting to private security firms who won't hesistate to use their weapons can only increase the confusion between reporters and combattants", he added.

The CNN team was twice fired on near a check-point in Tikrit, some 180 kilometres (115 miles) north of Baghdad.

An armed man on board the CNN car, in which journalist Brent Sadler was travelling, fired back, but the vehicle continued to be the target of sporadic fire until it had left the city.

SPACE.WIRE