World media bodies demanded a public inquiry on Monday into the killing by U.S. troops of a Reuters television cameraman, the second journalist from the international news agency to be killed in Iraq in four months.

Palestinian journalists hold portraits of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah August 18, 2003.   [Reuters]

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) in Paris urged Washington to investigate how, by the official U.S. account, a soldier mistook Mazen Dana's camera for a grenade launcher on Sunday.

Reuters also wants a probe into the second killing of one of its cameramen by a U.S. tank crew. On April 8, a shell killed Reuters' Taras Protsyuk at Baghdad's media hotel. Troops said they thought a spotter was directing enemy fire.

"Coming so soon after the death of Taras Protsyuk, also killed by a U.S. tank, this latest death is hard to bear," Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said in a statement.

"That's why I am personally calling upon the highest levels of the U.S. government for a full and comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Dana, a 43-year-old Palestinian known for award-winning reporting from his home town of Hebron, was shot by a soldier on a tank as he filmed near the capital's Abu Ghraib prison. He was the 18th international journalist to die in the conflict.

Amnesty International said foreign journalists had a high profile among civilian victims of action by U.S. forces:

"They're definitely taking place on a very regular basis," the human rights group's Iraq researcher Said Boumedouha told Reuters. "This is increasing the anti-American feeling."

"Last night we had a terrible tragedy," U.S. spokesman Colonel Guy Shields said in Baghdad. "I can assure you no one feels worse than the soldier who fired the shots."

American troops in Iraq are on high alert. Guerrillas have killed dozens of them in the past few months.

SHATTERED CAMERA

Many journalists paid their respects to Dana's colleagues at the Reuters bureau in the Iraqi capital. His camera, shattered as he fell under fire, still filming, lay broken in a corner.

Dana's body was being returned to his wife Suzan for burial near his West Bank home this week. He leaves four children.

The CPJ, which honored Dana with its International Press Freedom Award in 2001, called for "a full investigation into the shooting and a public accounting of the circumstances."

RSF Secretary General Robert Menard accused the United States of failing to conduct proper public inquiries into its previous killings of journalists -- notably those of Reuters' Protsyuk and a Spanish cameraman at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel.

"Not only have U.S. troops committed numerous blunders during the war but -- at this point -- these have not been the subject of an investigation worthy of the name," Menard said.

"The so-called inquiry by the Pentagon into the shelling of the Palestine Hotel...exonerates the U.S. army in a shameful way," he added in a statement, urging Washington to publish its report in full. So far only an extract has been made public.

Reuters has also asked to see the full report.

RSF said it was writing to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to seek a full investigation of Sunday's incident.

CIVILIAN DEATHS

In a report last month, Amnesty acknowledged the complex situation U.S. troops faced in distinguishing combatants from civilians in Iraq. But it urged them to ensure their combat troops respected basic U.N. rules on civilian policing.

The U.S. military declines to estimate numbers of civilian deaths but admits to some instances of troops killing civilians, notably when these have already been independently documented.

On July 27, witnesses and hospital staff told Reuters five people were shot dead by troops when their car strayed close to a Baghdad villa where special forces were conducting a raid.

On August 7 in Baghdad, a Reuters photographer watched U.S. troops open fire from a vehicle on bystanders in a busy shopping street. A bullet to the head killed a man standing next to him. In one of the bloodiest recorded incidents, soldiers in Falluja, 30 miles west of the capital, killed at least 13 people and wounded 75 on April 29, according to doctors, when they fired on demonstrators outside their fortified position.

By the soldiers' own account, they responded to two gunmen -- at night and after troops had launched smoke grenades -- by opening fire on a crowd of about 200 people. Buildings around the U.S. position were pitted with hundreds of bullet holes.

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