- Title: VARIOUS: PROFILE OF REUTERS CAMERAMAN MAZEN DANA, KILLED BY U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ.
- Date: 23rd August 2003
- Summary: HEBRON, WEST BANK (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BEST CAMERA FOOTAGE, FILMED BY DANA THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER
- Embargoed: 7th September 2003 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HEBRON, WEST BANK / BAGHDAD, IRAQ / JERUSALEM / NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City:
- Country: Usa West bank West bank Jerusalem Jerusalem Iraq
- Topics: Communications,Conflict,Obituaries,People
- Reuters ID: LVA5DDEHM3X353AHPOVM5OLMEG98
- Story Text: Award-winning Reuters cameraman, killed in Iraq, remembered for his bravery and excellence in the field.
Award-winning Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was killed by U.S. troops in Baghdad Sunday (August 17).
Dana was later buried in the West Bank town of Hebron where he braved bullets to chronicle the tragedy of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
Mourners accompanied Dana's body through his home town on Wednesday (August 20) in a funeral procession reminiscent of final honours accorded to Palestinians kil led by Israel in an uprising for statehood.
Dana was shot by a U.S. soldier on a tank as he filmed near Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison on Sunday (August 17).
American troops in Iraq are on high alert. Guerrillas have killed dozens of them in the past few months.
Dana was the 18th international journalist to die in the conflict in Iraq and leaves a wife, Suzanne, and four young children.
Colleagues from London, Israel and Jordan attended his funeral in Hebron, a flashpoint city where some 500 Jewish settlers live in secured enclaves among 120,000 Palestinians.
Dana was remembered by many in Hebron as a physically towering figure who never shrank from covering a dangerous story. He was shot and beaten several times.
"This was a man who lived the story, who went through everyday life having to be prepared to rush out the door, to leave his kids, leave his lunch and go and cover a story. And that was the way he lived," said Tom Kirkwood, former Senior Producer for Reuters Television in Jerusalem.
"Mazen, whether it was purely because of his dedication, or just the kind of guy that he was, was never scared of getting out there and covering a story and having bullets and stones whizzing around him. He was a real giant of a man, an incredible presence, and that seemed to give him a sense, and us who worked with him a sense that he was invulnerable," Kirkwood added.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) in Paris have urged Washington to investigate how, by the official U.S.
account, a soldier mistook Dana's camera for a grenade launcher.
It is the second killing of a Reuters cameramen by a U.S. tank crew. On April 8, a shell killed Reuters' Taras Protsyuk at Baghdad's media hotel. Troops said they thought a sniper was directing enemy fire.
"Coming so soon after the death of Taras Protsyuk, also killed by a U.S. tank, this latest death is hard to bear,"
Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said in a statement, commenting on Dana's death.
"That's why I am personally calling upon the highest levels of the U.S. government for a full and comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy," Glocer added.
The CPJ, which honoured Dana with its International Press Freedom Award in 2001, called for "a full investigation into the shooting and a public accounting of the circumstances". - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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