An American soldier who killed Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana in Iraq was justified in opening fire, a US army report said on Monday.
The report, made public seven months after Dana died, found that the soldier's "decision to fire at Mr Dana, though tragic and regrettable, was justified based on the information available to him at the time."
Reuters said it could not agree that the death of Dana, a prize-winning Palestinian cameraman, was justified and called for the urgent implementation of recommendations in the report to improve the safety of journalists in war zones.
It said Dana would not have died in the shooting outside Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison on August 17 if the recommendations had been in place.
The Army report said the soldier, who shot from a tank, had a "reasonable certainty" that Dana was about to fire a rocket- propelled grenade (RPG), having mistaken his camera for a launcher. But it said the tank commander recognised Dana was holding a camera immediately after the fatal shots were fired.
The report concluded that lack of procedures for communicating the presence of journalists among US troops contributed to the tragedy.
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