Moroccan press union: killing machine now targets journalists

"The US-British killing machine has changed its target in Iraq to aim at journalists who shed the light, with sound and image, on its law of the jungle practices," the Moroccan Press Union (SNPM) said in a release Tuesday.

This is illustrated by the deliberate "assassination of journalists and the premeditated bombing of their working places to silence them and eliminate any witness of their slaughters in Iraq," the release goes.

Among the victims of these criminal acts are many journalists of different nationalities, including Al-Jazira's corespondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, besides other journalists, correspondents, photographs and technicians wounded, the SNPM added.

The union considers the death of Tariq Ayoub as a vain attempt to silence a courageous voice that sought to inform on the killings perpetrated against disarmed civilians and journalists that ensured the coverage of the aggression.

The union described these acts as "crimes of war whose perpetrators in the US and British administrations must be punished," underlining that the killed journalist was well-known for his moral integrity and high professionalism among Moroccan colleagues with whom he studied in the kingdom between 1994 and 1996.