DOHA, April 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - U.S. missiles hit the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera television early Tuesday, April 8, killing and wounding two staff in what the Qatar-based Arabic news network charged was a deliberate strike.

Reporter Tareq Ayub was seriously hurt while another staffer, Zuheir al-Iraqi, was hit in the neck by shrapnel, the station said, airing footage of Ayub being taken away for treatment in a car belonging to rival network Abu Dhabi television, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Shortly after, al-Jazeera reported that Ayub died in the hospital, due to the critical wounds he sustained as a result of the U.S. missile attack. Airing his last report from the Iraqi capital, the television channel broke the sad news to its viewers, saying its cameraman was killed “by U.S. fire while doing his job”.

Al-Jazeera's presenter accused the U.S. military of "deliberately targeting" its offices and recalled that the station's Kabul bureau had been hit in November 2001 during the U.S.-led assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Abu Dhabi TV also announced its Baghdad bureau had been hit and broadcast a live report showing its camera position under attack.

As they filmed the arrival of two U.S. tanks on a major bridge in central Baghdad close to their offices overlooking the river, what appeared to be Iraqi machinegun fire clattered out from just beneath the camera position.

Several incoming blasts boomed out, engulfing the area in smoke and Abu Dhabi TV said it had lost contact with its correspondent. 

The television's offices are on the road between the Mansur Hotel and the planning ministry, not far from the Republican Palace compound where fierce fighting raged between U.S. and Iraqi troops early Tuesday.

A U.S. air force A10 "tank killer" plane provided close air support for the first time hitting the planning ministry and other targets in the administrative district around the sprawling city centre compound, an AFP correspondent reported.