The death of TV journalist, Tarek Ayoub, working for Arabic satellite television channel, Al Jazeera, highlights the mounting human cost of the Iraq war for the international media.

Ayoub died after his office along the Tigris river in central Baghdad was hit by missiles during an allied air raid.

US officials have denied that Al Jazeera was deliberately targeted. Some reports said US soldiers had been targetted by snipers hiding in the building.

Earlier, four staffers of the London-based Reuters news agency were injured when the Palestine Hotel, from which they were operating, was hit in an air strike.

The injured Reuters reporter, photographer, television cameraman and television technician were taken to a hospital, but the extent of their injuries was not immediately clear.

The first media casualty of the Iraq war was British TV journalist, Terry Lloyd, who was killed as he was returning to Kuwait from Iraq.

Gaby Rado, another British TV journalist, was killed in northern Iraq when he fell off the roof of his hotel.

A BBC interpreter was killed in northern Iraq when he opened the door of the car he was travelling in and stepped onto a land mine.

rediff.com Senior Editor Shyam Bhatia is the co-author of Saddam's Bomb, on Iraq's search for nuclear weapons.