Two Photographers Killed in Somalia p.

By: Editorial Staff

A SOMALI MOB killed an Associated Press photographer and a Reuters photographer July 12 after United Nations helicopters blasted targets in southern Mogadishu.
Supporters of Somali warlord Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, who has been blamed for attacks on U.N. troops during the past several weeks, said up to 73 Somalis died in the helicopter assault. Other reports put the number at 13 dead and 11 wounded.
Somali interpreters and drivers employed by the news agencies reported seeing the bodies of Hansi Krauss, an AP photographer from Germany, and photographer Dan Eldon, a Briton who worked for Reuters out of Kenya.
Mohammed Shaffi, a Reuters cameraman from Kenya, was shot in the leg and stoned by the mob. He was rescued by colleagues and taken to a U.S. Army field hospital.
Two other Reuters journalists were missing.
Reporters and photographers headed toward the scene of the helicopter assault in several vehicles shortly after the bombardment ended. About 100 Somalis opened fire. The five journalists got separated from the rest of their colleagues, who were able to get away.
U.N. troops have stepped up efforts to restore order in this chaotic city during the past few weeks. Somali gunmen have been roaming the streets virtually at will since 24 Pakistani U.N. soldiers were slain in an ambush June 5, opening a round of attacks on U.N. forces that have killed a total of 35 soldiers and wounded 137.
Krauss was the second AP journalist to die on the job in three months. Sharon Herbaugh, chief of the AP bureau in Islamabad, Pakistan, died April 16 in a helicopter crash in the mountains of Afghanistan.
A Somali who worked for the AP as an interpreter, Ali Ibrahim Mursal, was shot to death Jan. 5 while trying to protect a reporter from a robber in Mogadishu's main market.
Jean-Claude Jumel, a French sound technician, was killed June 18 when gunmen ambushed a news crew from France's TFI network.
Krauss, 30, joined the AP in Berlin in 1989, where he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall that year and later covered the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is survived by his parents, two brothers and a sister.
He was the sixteenth AP reporter to die in the line of duty since 1938.
"We weep again for one of our own," said AP president Louis Boccardi. "Like Sharon Herbaugh's death in April, the loss of Hansi Krauss reminds us all of the great sacrifices they and their brave counterparts make so that the world can know what is going on in even the most dangerous places. His adventurous spirit took him where the action was. His talent recorded it in powerful images that stand as his memorial."