The havoc invading US troops wreaked on the international press in Baghdad on Tuesday was nothing short of a war crime.

Their bombs devastated the Baghdad offices of the al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV networks.

Their tank shell struck the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad known for its concentration of foreign journalists covering the war.

They killed three journalists and wounded four in a single day. There was no evidence any of it was by accident.

"That tank shell, if it was indeed an American tank shell, was aimed directly at this hotel and directly at journalists. This was not an accident. It seems to be a very accurate shot," said eyewitness David Chater, a Sky News correspondent.

It was indeed an American tank shell.

General Buford Blount, the commander of the US Third Infantry Division in Baghdad, acknowledged it was his troops who had fired at the hotel.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman confessed the Defence Department was aware of the press presence at the hotel.

The Pentagon did express regret over the tragedies. But there was no indication of willingness to assume liability.

Instead, as always, they tried to evade and transfer the blame to Saddam Hussein.

"We don't target civilians and we have always said that Baghdad is a dangerous place for journalists for a number of reasons - not the least of which is the track record of the Saddam Hussein regime of intentionally putting civilians in danger," Whitman said.

Journalists are civilians. The hotel as well as the offices of the al-Jezeera and Abu Dhabi networks were all civilian infrastructures located in civilian areas.

If the strikes were not aimed at chosen targets, were the Americans conducting indiscriminative bombings on innocent civilians?

Baghdad would not be a dangerous place for journalists if it were not for the US/British invasion.

And the journalists at the Palestine Hotel were not Saddam's hostages or human shields.

The Pentagon surely knows the frailty of such excuses. So its spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, argued the US troops fired at the hotel to exercise their "inherent right to self-defence."

It was in return of small arm fire from the hotel, Clarke and several others claimed, though nobody on the spot heard any gunfire from the hotel or its immediate area.

There was also the line that those inside the tank mistook camera lenses on hotel balconies for binoculars.

That is one step away from US Marine Corps General Peter Pace's notorious claim that the American troops "absolutely did the right thing" when they killed seven Iraqi women and children because they thought their lives were threatened.

American GI's are seeing their enemies everywhere, but their hysteria is no excuse for indiscriminative killing.

Beyond various American attempts to explain away their responsibilities, there is the suspicion of a US intention to silence unfavourable media voices.

The Pentagon did not conceal its true intention to terminate enemy propaganda when it bombed the Iraqi national television station.

It is not bold enough to apply the same rhetoric to the non-Iraqi media. But it did warn the Qatar-based al-Jazeera against "pro-Iraqi propaganda."

The network's Kabul office was among the first targets of the US bombardment in the 2001 crusade in Afghanistan.

Whatever the case, the US military should be held accountable by international humanitarian law for its attacks on civilians.

(China Daily April 10, 2003)