Reuters cameraman laid to rest after death at hands of US soldier in Iraq

MAZEN DANA, the Reuters cameraman killed by US troops in Iraq, was buried yesterday in the West Bank city where he braved bullets to chronicle the tragedy of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

About 3,000 mourners, some chanting “Americans are dogs”, accompanied Dana’s body through his home town of Hebron in a procession reminiscent of final honours accorded to Palestinians killed by Israel in an uprising for statehood.

Dana, a 41-year-old Palestinian, was best known for award-winning reporting from Hebron, a main flashpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where he had been wounded and beaten numerous times by Israeli soldiers.

On Sunday, while on assignment in Iraq, he was shot dead by a US soldier on a tank while filming near a Baghdad prison.

Reuters has called on the US army to investigate how, by the official US account, a soldier mistook Dana’s television camera for a grenade launcher.

A US spokesman in Baghdad called the killing a “terrible tragedy”.

Dana was the second Reuters journalist to be killed in Baghdad in four months. A US tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, base for many foreign media, killing Taras Protsyuk, a 35-year-old Ukrainian cameraman who was filming the arrival of US troops in the city centre.

Dana’s death brought to 18 the number of journalists or their assistants to die in Iraq since the war began. He leaves a wife, Suzanne, and four young children. Dana’s body, draped in a Palestinian flag, was carried aloft through the streets from a mosque in central Hebron to his burial at the city’s Martyrs’ Cemetery.

A smattering of Iraqi and Hamas flags fluttered amid the procession for Dana, who had received numerous memorial tributes from groups ranging from international relief agencies to militant organisations.

“Mazen, rest in peace, we will continue the struggle,” mourners chanted. Shouts against Israel and the US occasionally sounded from the crowd.

As his body was lowered into the ground, relatives wept and one of his brothers collapsed in the arms of fellow mourners. Minutes after the funeral four Israeli police vehicles drove past. Youths broke from the crowd of mourners and threw stones at it.