MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, 41, was videotaping outside the prison hours after the attack when U.S. soldiers shot him. He was the 17th news organization employee to be killed since the war began.

The videotape in Dana's camera showed two U.S. tanks coming toward him. Shots were fired, apparently from the tanks, and Dana fell to the ground. His body was taken away by a U.S. helicopter.

''We saw a tank 50 meters away, I heard six shots and Mazen fell to the ground,'' Dana's driver Munzer Abbas said.

One of the soldiers started shouting at us, but when he knew we were journalists, he softened. One of the soldiers told us they thought Mazen carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.''

''There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists. This was not an accident,'' Abbas said.

A U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity that American soldiers saw Dana from a distance and mistook him for an Iraqi guerrilla, so they opened fire. When the soldiers came closer, they realized Dana was a journalist, the official said.

''This is clearly another tragic incident, it is extremely regrettable,'' Central Command spokesman Sgt. Maj. Lewis Matson said.

Tragic, indeed. But also the natural result of troops left standing in the line of fire for months.

Watch for the zeal and anger with which the press reports this, the death of one of their own.

And compare that with how they report the death of soldiers. "Two more soldiers died in Baghdad today", as if noting the arrival of robins in the spring.

And some will say it was deliberate...which of course, it wasn't.