BAGHDAD, April 8: Three journalists were killed amid relentless fighting between US and Iraqi forces for control of Baghdad on Tuesday.

The ferocious fighting raised the numbers of casualties among civilians and journalists in the city.

Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman from Spanish television station Telecinco, were killed after a US attack on the high-rise Palestine Hotel in Baghdad that houses foreign journalists.

The US military said a coalition tank had fired a single round at the hotel after coming under grenade and small arms fire from the building. Three other Reuters staff members were also injured in the attack.

A reporter for the Al Jazeera network died and a cameraman was injured after the station’s offices were hit in an earlier separate attack that the Qatar-based Arabic news station charged was a deliberate US strike.

But the US military denied deliberately hitting Al Jazeera, saying it only targeted legitimate military targets.

The International Federation of Journalists (IJF) said there was “no doubt” the US attacks could be deliberately targeting journalists, which would make them a “grave and serious violation of international law”.

Spain said it would ask the United States for an explanation of the Spanish cameraman’s death, which brought to at least 12 the number of journalists and staff killed in the 20 days since the invasion began.

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al Sahhaf remained defiant, telling journalists that US forces will either surrender “or be burned in their tanks”.

Iraqi television went off the air as US forces continued to extend their operations in Baghdad.

The Arab Journalists’ Union accused the US military of deliberately targeting reporters in Baghdad.

“The American invasion forces are deliberately attacking journalists,” the union’s secretary general, Salaheddin Hafedh, said in a statement.

“The air strikes and murder of journalists clearly show that the American and British invasion forces are looking to prevent the press from carrying out its duties,” the statement said.

Mr Hafedh charged that the coalition “has now begun to strike journalists to stop them from revealing the atrocities committed against civilians”.

The union called for international pressure on Washington and London “to stop their barbaric aggression against the Iraqi people”.

The United States denied targeting the media.

Two cameramen, a Spaniard working for Spain’s Telecinco network and a Ukrainian employed by the British agency Reuters, were killed when a US tank fired at the hotel housing most foreign journalists in Baghdad.

Three other Reuters employees were injured.— AFP