PARIS, March 24: International journalists’ rights organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) says it is “shocked” to learn of the death of an Australian journalist working in Iraqi Kurdistan as well as of the disappearance of several others, and demanded of the belligerents not to use such tactics against newsmen.

RSF Secretary General Robert Menard said that “these men have paid a high price for their willingness to report freely and fully on military operations in Iraq.”

RSF, he said, was “urgently appealing to belligerents to not take any action that would knowingly endanger the life or safety of journalists.”

An Australian journalist working for American ABC television was killed on Saturday in a booby-trapped car explosion in Iraqi Kurdistan. The blast happened at the checkpoint outside the village of Khormal, near the Iranian border.

French Army sends a decontamination unit to Qatar

Paul Michaud

Paris, March 24: The French Army has just sent to Qatar a decontamination unit, which apparently contains several dozen men specialized in counteracting NBC warfare.

The unit contains a mobile laboratory (laboratoire ambulant) that is capable of detecting some 900 different toxic products.

According to Lt. Col Louis de Corbiac, who is attached to the unit, its principal task will be to establish a “map” of any areas that might be contaminated, although he said that for the moment no biological or chemical bombs had been used by Iraq.

He also noted that the decontamination unit - another of which would be also sent to the United Arab Emirates - was being sent to Qatar as part of defence accords that existed between France and a number of Gulf states.