Journalists Die in Iraq Attack, Cameroon Plane Crash

I have to be honest about something. When I hear that a journalist has been killed in the line of duty, I always feel a bit queasy for two reasons: It hits closer to home when it's somebody in your line of work -- you wonder if you know or have worked with the person. Or worse, if it's a friend. Then, however, I also get an uncomfortable feeling when I draw focus to the journalist's story when he or she is not the only one killed at the time. This is especially true when we focus on the Westerners killed and gloss over other victims like so much driftwood.

In Anthony Mitchell's case, his story is certainly worth telling. Mitchell was an Associated Press reporter well-known for his work in Africa.

Mitchell made global headlines last month with his in-depth investigation into the illegal detention and transfer of terror suspects from Kenya to Somalia and eventually into Ethiopian prisons. His work forced U.S. and Ethiopian officials to acknowledge a program that until then had led to the secret detention of dozens of people, including women and children.

Human rights groups praised the story, which won an internal AP award for breaking news, but it was stridently criticized by the Ethiopian government as coming from an "ivory tower" where the war on terror was not understood. It was not the first time Mitchell's stories angered Ethiopian authorities.

Still, Mitchell was only one of 114 people from more than 20 nations killed when a Kenyan airliner crashed in the Cameroon jungle over the weekend. Many families, most of them African, are mourning their losses today.

In Iraq, six U.S. soldiers and an embedded reporter were killed Sunday by an IED explosion in the province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass reports the reporter killed was Russian news photographer Dmitry Chebotayev, who had worked with several news outlets.

But they were not the only ones killed in Iraq Sunday. Here is a report from McClatchy on others in Iraq who also died Sunday.

Dhiya Abu Mohammed ran to check on his son when he heard the booms of two car bombs resonate near his house in the Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa. Pools of blood covered the pavement in the marketplace and outside a bus station. Fruits, vegetables and body parts covered the road, and Abu Mohammed wept as he rushed to help the wounded into pickup trucks.

In one minibus, a mother and her two daughters were dead, the children still clutching their teddy bears. Sprawled on the road was a bleeding pregnant woman, shrapnel piercing her belly.

1:19 PM ET | 05- 7-2007 | permalink