By Andrew Gray

BAGHDAD, Sept 25 (Reuters) - From the day in July when a man walked out of a crowd near a Baghdad museum and shot dead a British television cameraman, foreign journalists in Iraq have been wondering if they were all targets for postwar attacks.

Thursday morning's bomb blast at a hotel serving as the bureau of U.S. television network NBC, which killed a Somali guard, left little room for doubt.

It was the first attack on a building housing a media company since the official end of major combat on May 1.

Reporters in Iraq are now at risk from guerrillas who see the Western media as part of the U.S.-led occupation, as well as from U.S. troops mistaking journalists for attackers and from common criminals like bandits who roam some highways.

Anxiety began to rise after the July 5 killing of Richard Wild, who had arrived in Iraq just a week before to work as a freelance cameraman, although some suggested the 24-year-old ex-soldier had been mistaken for a member of the U.S. military.

The bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad the following month showed guerrillas would not limit their attacks to the occupiers and prompted many news media to retreat to hotels and offices behind concrete road blocks and barbed wire.

"I get the strong feeling that we are a target," one British television journalist said. "I think the people who are killing American soldiers don't make any distinction between us and combatants."



FRIENDLY MAJORITY

The tragedy is that Western reporters find the vast majority of Iraqis to be friendly, talkative and hospitable -- even if they have plenty of complaints to address to Western leaders.

"We are generally well received by the Iraqis," said Patrick E. Tyler, Baghdad bureau chief for the New York Times. "But we're taking all the prudent precautions we can think of."

The hostility of a radical minority and general lawlessness have forced many journalists to think about security first and the story second.

Angry crowds threatened and roughed up reporters after the August 29 bombing in Najaf which killed a top Shi'ite cleric and more than 80 other people. Several journalists also narrowly escaped death in the bombing itself.

At least one reporter has also been beaten up in the town of Falluja, a bastion of anti-Americanism west of Baghdad.

Jeremy Little, an Australian soundman with NBC, died on July 6 from wounds sustained in an ambush in Falluja. Little had been with U.S. soldiers, who were the target of the attack. His death made reporters warier of going on patrol with U.S. troops.

But before Thursday's blast at a hotel markedly less secure than the fortified Sheraton and Palestine Hotels where most big media companies are based, U.S. troops themselves had appeared to pose the greatest threat to journalists in recent weeks.

A soldier shot dead Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana as he filmed west of Baghdad on August 17. Other U.S. troops had given him permission to film but the U.S. military said the soldier thought Dana was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

During a firefight after they had come under attack last week, U.S. soldiers shot up the car of an Associated Press photographer while he and a colleague were inside. The pair were also fired upon as they ran from the car but emerged unscathed.

Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service