2 Polish Journalists Killed in Iraq

By: (AP) Gunmen ambushed a Polish TV crew south of Baghdad on Friday, killing a producer and a correspondent who was Poland's best-known war reporter, Iraqi and Polish officials said.

Waldemar Milewicz, a correspondent for Poland's TVP television, and Mounir Bouamrane, a dual Algerian-Polish national, died in the gunfire in Mahmoudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, Polish television said.

Cameraman Jerzy Ernst had his forearm shattered in the attack and was recuperating at a U.S. hospital in Baghdad.

Ernst told Polish television they had set out Friday, only their third day in Iraq, in their car for Najaf, which is the scene of heavy fighting between U.S. troops and Shiite Muslim militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The road was blocked, so the Iraqi driver, who was not injured, decided to take another route, said Ernst, who was in the front seat. Milewicz and Bouamrane were in the back.

"Suddenly we heard shots from very close behind and the window was shattered," Ernst said. "It took about 30 to 40 seconds. We all ducked down and then there was silence."

Milewicz was hit in the first volley, he said. As they tried to remove him from the back seat, "there was another round of shots and Mounir was hit and killed," said Ernst,

Their bullet-riddled car had "press" marked on the windshield.

Milewicz, 47, had won numerous awards for his reporting from Chechnya, Afghanistan and other war zones, and had worked for TVP for more than 20 years. Among them was an award from Johns Hopkins University for excellence in journalism reporting from Chechnya in 1995.

"He went wherever there were conflicts to report them," anchorwoman Danuta Holecka said. "He risked his life for us to show the world as it is."

Bouamrane, 36, had worked for Polish television for 11 years.

The Mahmoudiyah area has been the site of several slayings of foreigners in past months. An American missionary and two CNN employees were killed earlier this year in the same area.

An estimated 27 journalists have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Last week, the committee identified Iraq as the world's most dangerous place to be a journalist.

"Postwar Iraq is fraught with risks for reporters: banditry, gunfire and bombings are common," the committee said in a report. "Insurgents have added a new threat by systematically targeting foreigners, including journalists, and Iraqis who work for them."