CNN armed guard returns fire at Tikrit

CNN, the US cable news network, was accused of endangering the lives of journalists in Iraq after an armed guard travelling with one of its crews returned fire at a checkpoint outside Tikrit yesterday.

War correspondents are usually very careful to remain unarmed to preserve their status as impartial observers and ensure they cannot be mistaken for enemy combatants by either side in a conflict.

Although CNN, part of the AOL Time Warner media empire, is not the only news organisation to hire armed guards during this war, it became the first to use its weaponry when the convoy outside Tikrit came under fire from Iraqi guards wielding automatic machine-guns.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time press vehicles have travelled with armed security guards. It did not happen in the Balkans and it didn't occur in the first Gulf War," a spokesman for the Paris-based watchdog Reporters sans Frontières said.

The organisation added: "This behaviour creates a dangerous precedent that could imperil all other reporters covering this conflict and others in the future. There is a real risk that belligerents will believe all press vehicles are armed."

The firefight outside Tikrit was captured live on CNN. The correspondent Brent Sadler, formerly of ITN, described how he and his crew drove almost into the centre of Tikrit before they came under attack and sped away. The rear window of CNN's four-wheel-drive was shattered by gunfire and the glass hit one crew member in the back of the head.

Television pictures showed CNN "security advisers" responding with their automatic machine-gun fire, an aspect of the story that was subsequently omitted from the summary on CNN's website.

Matthew Firman, a CNN spokesman, defended the decision to hire armed guards, saying the security of his staff was paramount.

"We only put our teams in situations in which we can do our best to ensure their safety," he said. "If it means hiring armed guards or security consultants we will do that."

Other journalists in northern Iraq have acknowledged carrying armed peshmerga soldiers with them in recent days.

In a piece for yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, John Simpson of the BBC described being accompanied through Kirkuk by "four extremely tough and well-armed peshmerga soldiers" – although he insisted that they were supplied against his will by the PUK, one of the two main Kurdish political parties in the region.