'LA Times' Writer Fineman Dies in Baghdad

By: (AP) Mark Fineman, an award-winning correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, died Tuesday while on assignment in Iraq of an apparent heart attack. He was 51.

Fineman was waiting with a colleague in the offices of the Iraqi Governing Council for an interview when he complained of chest pains and collapsed, Times staffers in Baghdad said. He was taken to a hospital but doctors could not revive him.

Fineman, whose story about Iraq's new foreign investment policy appeared on the front page of Tuesday's Times, worked at the paper for 15 years.

He was based in Washington, D.C., and had recently arrived in Baghdad. He reported for the Times from the Philippines, India, Cyprus, and Mexico, and had been the paper's Caribbean correspondent based in Florida.

Before joining the Times, Fineman was a foreign correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

He received a George Polk award in 1985, and won citations from the Overseas Press Club in 2001, the National Headliners in 1991, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors for deadline writing in 1987.

A graduate of Syracuse University, he was married and had a daughter by a previous marriage, colleagues said.

Journalists Killed Since Iraq War Began

News organization employees killed since the war on Iraq began on March 20:

* Mazen Dana, a Reuters cameraman, shot Aug. 17 while working near the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

* Jeremy Little, Australian sound engineer for NBC News, died July 6 at military hospital in Germany from wounds suffered June 29 in a grenade attack on a military vehicle in Fallujah.

* Richard Wild, British freelance cameraman, July 5, outside Iraq's Natural History Museum in Baghdad.

* Tareq Ayyoub, Jordanian journalist for Al-Jazeera, Qatar, April 8, at the Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad.

* Jose Couso, cameraman for Spanish television network Telecinco, April 8, at the Palestine hotel in Baghdad.

* Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian television cameraman for Reuters, April 8, at the Palestine hotel in Baghdad.

* Christian Liebig, journalist for Focus weekly, Germany, April 7, south of Baghdad.

* Julio Anguita Parrado, reporter for El Mundo, Spain, April 7, south of Baghdad.

* Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed, a Kurdish translator working with the British Broadcasting Corp., April 6, northern Iraq.

* Michael Kelly, editor-at-large, The Atlantic Monthly, April 3, near Baghdad.

* Kaveh Golestan, Iranian freelance cameraman for the BBC, northern Iraq, April 2.

* Terry Lloyd, correspondent for Independent Television News, Britain, March 22, southern Iraq.

* Paul Moran, freelance cameraman for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 22, northern Iraq.

Other deaths, disappearances:

* Mark Fineman, an award-winning correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, died Sept. 23 in Baghdad of an apparent heart attack.

* Elizabeth Neuffer, a reporter for The Boston Globe, died May 8 after the car in which she was a passenger apparently struck a guardrail near the town of Samarra, about halfway between Baghdad and Tikrit. Neuffer's translator, Waleed Khalifa Hassan Al-Dulami, also died in the accident.

* Veronica Cabrera, an Argentine freelance camerawoman, died April 15 of injuries from a car crash outside the Iraqi capital, which instantly killed Mario Podesta, an Argentine television reporter, on April 14.

* Reporter David Bloom of NBC News died April 6 from an apparent blood clot while covering the war south of Baghdad.

* Gaby Rado, a correspondent for Channel 4 News, Britain, died March 30 after apparently falling from a hotel roof in northern Iraq.

* Two other Independent Television News journalists, cameraman Fred Nerac of France and translator Hussein Osman of Lebanon, have been missing since the shooting incident March 22 in southern Iraq in which Terry Lloyd was killed.