Two Reporters Killed in Missile Strike Near Baghdad

The strike on the U.S. communications center in the southern outskirts of Baghdad also killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded 15 others.

Spanish journalist Julio Anguita Parrado from the daily newspaper El Mundo and German reporter Christian Liebig from the weekly magazine Focus were nine miles south of central Baghdad at the time of the strike, according to a statement posted on El Mundo’s Web site.

Parrado and Liebig were embedded reporters with the 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army and recently traveled into Iraq to report on the division’s advance towards Baghdad.

The war in Iraq was the first conflict that Parrado, 32, had covered. Previously, Parrado worked out of New York City, where he covered the Sept. 11 terror attacks for El Mundo.

“He has just died, doing his job as a war correspondent. He was with me three weeks ago and said that he wanted to be on the front line,” Parrado’s father, Julio Anguita, told the Spanish state radio.

“Those who have been able to read his stories know that he was a very open man and a good journalist. He has fulfilled his duty,” his father said.

Roughly 600 “embedded” journalists have been assigned to cover and traveling with U.S. and British forces in Iraq and the Gulf region.

Their deaths bring to three the number of embedded reporters killed while stationed with coalition troops in Iraq.

On April 4, Michael Kelly, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post who was embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division, was killed in an Humvee accident.

NBC reporter David Bloom, also embedded with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, died from a pulmonary embolism on April 6.