Al Jazeera correspondent Tariq Ayoub was killed when two US missiles struck the Baghdad offices of the news channel. Al Jazeera said another cameraman, Zuheir Iraqi, was slightly wounded with a shrapnel injury to his neck.
In a statement, the Qatar-based channel said: "We regret to inform you that our cameraman and correspondent Tariq Ayoub was killed this morning during the US missile strike on our Baghdad office."
Yasser Abu Hilalah, the Al Jazeera correspondent in Amman, said that the office was deliberately targeted. He argued that it was not the first time, and that the attack in Baghdad had followed one in Basra and one in Afghanistan in 2001.
"The Al Jazeera office is located in a residential area and there is no way that the attack was a mistake," Abu Hilalah said.
The attack on the Al Jazeera Basra office saw four bombs strike, but they did not explode. The attack in Baghdad left the office in ruins after two missiles struck. However, the Arab station said it would continue its coverage of the war in Iraq.
The two journalists, Ayoub and Iraqi, were standing on the roof getting ready for a live broadcast as the US assault on Republic Guard positions intensified, according to Tayseer Allouni, another Al Jazeera correspondent.
Since the death of Ayoub, two more journalists were killed when a US tank opened fire on the Palestine Hotel after it came under fire.
Reuters said Ukrainian cameraman Taras Protsyuk, 35, died of the wounds inflicted, as did Spanish cameraman Jose Couso, 37. Five other journalists were wounded in the attack.
On its website, Al Jazeera reports that cameraman Iraqi came down bleeding, but Ayoub did not come down. "I ran up as the shells were still falling and crawled on the roof and shouted for Tariq, but he did not answer," Allouni said.
Allouni had left the roof because of the bombardment, but he later returned with the help of Abu Dhabi TV correspondent, Jaber Obeid. The two of them found Ayoub's body, carried it down to Abu Dhabi TV's jeep and drove to the hospital.
Ayoub, 35, was married with one daughter. He had only travelled to Baghdad five days before to join the Al Jazeera team from the channel's Amman office, where he had worked as a financial correspondent for three years. Originally from Palestine, he had also worked for the Jordan Times and the international news agency Associated Press.
"It seems that we have become a target," Allouni said. Another of Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondents, Majed Abdel Hadi, called the US missile strike and Ayoub's death a "crime".
The death toll of media workers killed covering the war in Iraq now stands at 11, although a number of other interpreters aides have also been killed, putting the toll much higher.
Britain has lost three with the death of the BBC's Iranian cameraman Kaveh Golestan, Channel 4 journalist Gaby Rado and ITN's Terry Lloyd. Australia has lost one, Australian Broadcasting Corporation cameraman Paul Moran.
The US has lost two, David Bloom from NBC News and Washington Post columnist and Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large Michael Kelly. Spain has also lost two, Jose Couso and Julio Anguita Parrado.
Germany has lost Christian Liebig, who wrote for weekly magazine Focus, and Ukraine has also lost one in Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk.
Last week, Al Jazeera, which in recent weeks has broadcast images of dead and captured allied troops, stopped reporting from Iraq after two of its reporters were banned.
It claimed the move was in response to its two correspondents being ordered to leave the country by the Iraqi Information Ministry, which has accused it of being pro-Western.
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