New York, March
23, 2003 Veteran ITV News correspondent Terry Lloyd, who disappeared
in southern Iraq yesterday, is dead, according to the British television network
ITN, which produces ITV News. “There is now sufficient evidence to believe
that ITV News Correspondent Terry Lloyd, 50, was killed in an incident on the
Southern Iraq war front yesterday,” ITN’s Web site reported. ITN said it believed
that the journalist’s body was in a hospital in Basra, which is still under Iraqi
control. ITN did not release the details of Lloyd’s death, but spokeswoman
Katie Perrior told CPJ that their statement was based on information received
from numerous sources in southern Iraq and at the Iraqi hospital in Basra, where
Lloyd’s ID was found. The other two journalists who disappeared with
Lloyd, cameraman Fred Nerac and translator Hussein Othman, are still missing.
Lloyd, Nerac, and Othman disappeared yesterday, March 22, after coming
under fire while driving to the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The journalists
were not embedded with military forces. The three journalists, along
with cameraman Daniel Demoustier, were traveling in two marked press vehicles
in the city of Iman Anas when they came under fire, ITN reported. According to
Demoustier, they had been pursued by Iraqi troops who may have been attempting
to surrender to the journalists. In a BBC report published yesterday, Demoustier
said that the incoming fire to their vehicles came from U.S. or British forces
in the area. The British Ministry of Defense is investigating the incident.
Demoustier, who was injured when the car he was driving crashed into a ditch
and caught fire, managed to escape. He said he did not see what happened to Lloyd,
who was seated next to him, or to the other crew members. Lloyd is the
second journalist who has been killed since U.S. and coalition forces launched
their military assault on Iraq last week. Paul Moran, a free-lance cameraman for
Australia’s ABC News, was killed yesterday, while filming at a checkpoint in northern
Iraq when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in his vicinity. “CPJ
mourns the loss of our colleagues Terry Lloyd and Paul Moran,” said CPJ acting
director Joel Simon. “We express our deepest condolences to their families and
friends.” 
|