Taras Protsyuk

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Taras Protsyuk (1968 – April 8, 2003) was a Ukrainian-born TV cameraman working for Reuters, who was killed during the US invasion of Iraq.

Protsyuk was filming from a balcony of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where most of the foreign journalists were staying, when a shell fired by a U.S. M1 Abrams tank killed him and José Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television station Telecinco. The U.S. soldier commanding the tank was Sgt. Shawn Gibson of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division.

On the day Protsyuk was killed, a total of three locations in Baghdad housing journalists were fired upon by U.S. armed forces, killing three journalists and wounding four.

During his career, Protsyuk covered the conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo. He also did news reports about Poland where he was based, working for Reuters.

There were conflicting reports about the nature of the shelling that killed Protsyuk. In the immediate aftermath of the incdient, U.S. military officials claimed one of their tanks had fired on the hotel in response to incoming sniper and rocket fire. However, journalists in the hotel at the time of the shelling, claimed to have heard no fire coming from the hotel. Moreover, the accidental nature of the incident was subject to further questioning when a former military intelligence official revealed in 2008 that the Palestine Hotel had been listed as a military target prior to the 2003 incident^[1].