Television reporter Waldemar Milewicz, killed in Iraq on Friday along with his producer, was Poland’s best-known war correspondent and the winner of numerous journalism awards for his reporting from Chechnya, Afghanistan and other conflict zones.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski called Milewicz’s death a loss for the entire nation.
”Poland’s most outstanding journalist has been killed,” the PAP news agency quoted Kwasniewski as saying on a trip to London. ”It is a great tragedy for his relatives and a great loss for us all.”
He stressed, however, that Milewicz’s death will have no effect on Poland’s role in the occupation of Iraq, where the country leads a multinational force that includes 2 400 of its own troops.
Milewicz worked more than 20 years for Poland’s state TVP, which led its noon newscast on Friday with a 15-minute tribute to the 47-year-old reporter who died during his third day in Iraq.
”He went wherever there were conflicts to report them,” news anchor Danuta Holecka said, her voice cracking. ”He risked his life for us to show the world as it is.”
Milewicz, Polish-Algerian producer Mounir Bouamrane and Polish cameraman Jerzy Ernst were ambushed south of Baghdad. Milewicz and Bouamrane were killed, while Ernst was injured in the arm.
They were attacked on the road from the capital to the troubled southern cities of Karbala, Najaf and Kufa, said Mahmoudiyah police Lieutenant Alaa Hussein.
Talking from a US military hospital in Iraq to TVP, Ernst said the main highway was blocked and their driver instead took a local road he thought to be safe.
”Milewicz and Mounir were sitting in the back seat, I was in the front seat with my camera. Suddenly we heard shots from very close behind and the window was shattered,” Ernst said.
”Then there was silence and suddenly Mounir started to shout. We got out of the car and we saw Waldek [Milewicz] was sitting bent over, very pale, with blood running from his nose.”
The two tried to get Milewicz from the car, but the shooting resumed, killing Bouamrane and wounding Ernst.
Born on August 20 1956 in Dobre Miasto, northern Poland, Milewicz began his journalism career in 1984.
He won many Polish and international awards for his work, including an award by Johns Hopkins University for his reporting from Chechnya in 1995.
On TVP’s Friday newscast, the station played an old interview with Milewicz in which he dismissed the danger of being a war correspondent.
”You can get killed in downtown Warsaw,” he said.
Milewicz, on his second trip to Iraq during the current conflict, was remembered by his colleagues a fun-loving risk taker.
”He had an exceptional sense of humour and he was always at the centre of any social gathering,” said fellow TVP journalist Slawomira Sliwinska.
”He had very good journalistic nose about where to be and when,” Sliwinska said. ”He knew he took great risks, but he always counted on his good luck.”
But the other victim, 36-year-old Algerian-born Bouamrane, was no risk taker and hesitated before making the trip to Iraq, his first foreign assignment with TVP, said Jerzy Kodla, Bouamrane’s supervisor.
”He made up his mind to go after thinking long about it and talking it over with his family,” Kodla said of Bouamrane, whose father is Algerian and mother Polish. Bouamrane moved to Poland from Algeria in 1993.
Milewicz, who is divorced, is survived by a 23-year-old daughter, Monika, who is studying in the United States.
Bouamrane is survived by his wife and a daughter (13). — Sapa-AP