It’s been a fatal week­end for for­eign cor­re­spon­dents.
On Sun­day, the day the plane car­ry­ing Anthony Mitchell of AP was found, Dmitry Cheb­o­tayev, a Russ­ian pho­tog­ra­pher for EPA and Russ­ian Newsweek was killed in Diyala province along with six U.S. sol­diers, with whom he was embed­ded.
As the Com­mit­tee to Project Jour­nal­ists said in a statement,

The Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ists mourns the death on Sun­day of Dmitry Cheb­o­tayev, the first Russ­ian jour­nal­ist to be killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led inva­sion in March 2003. Cheb­o­tayev, a free­lance pho­tog­ra­pher embed­ded with U.S. forces, was killed along with six Amer­i­can sol­diers when a road­side bomb struck a U.S. mil­i­tary vehi­cle in Diyala province, north­east of Bagh­dad.
Cheb­o­tayev was on assign­ment for the Russ­ian edi­tion of Newsweek mag­a­zine, report­ing on the efforts of U.S. forces to con­trol roads in Diyala province, Leonid Parfy­onov, edi­tor of the magazine’s Russ­ian edi­tion, told CPJ. Cheb­o­tayev had been in Iraq for more than two months.
…
Cheb­o­tayev, 29, had free­lanced for sev­eral news agen­cies, includ­ing the German-based Euro­pean Pressphoto Agency and the inde­pen­dent Moscow daily Kom­m­er­sant. A sam­pling of his pho­tos can be viewed on his Light­stalk­ers pro­file page. Light­stalk­ers is an online net­work of pho­tog­ra­phers and other visual jour­nal­ists that serves as a direc­tory, data­base, and resource cen­ter.
At least 101 jour­nal­ists and 38 media sup­port staffers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led inva­sion in March 2003, mak­ing Iraq the dead­liest con­flict for the press in CPJ’s 26-year his­tory. Seven embed­ded jour­nal­ists have been killed since the war began.

He last logged into Light­stalk­ers five days ago. His loca­tion is listed as Baqoubah, Iraq, and his travel log shows that he worked in Rus­sia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, Chech­nya and Iraq. My friend Bill Put­nam, another pho­tog­ra­pher, offered advice to him regard­ing embed­ding in Iraq. It’s another sad day for jour­nal­ists in the tight-knit world of Mid­dle East cov­er­age, after the loss of Anthony on Sat­ur­day.
Six sol­diers and a jour­nal­ist killed in one blast makes me sus­pect it was an awfully big IED that hit a Bradley fight­ing vehi­cle, rather than a humvee, which holds five guys, tops. I’m just spec­u­lat­ing, though.
I hope I don’t have to do any more posts like this. Rest in peace, Dmitry and Anthony. You will be missed.