Spain cameraman slain in Sierra Leone laid to rest

Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork, a 53-year-old American, was also shot dead, and two other Reuters

journalists–cameraman Mark Chisholm and photographer Yannis Behrakis–were wounded in the ambush, which has sparked international condemnation.

Gil Moreno de Mora, who had worked for AP since 1995, was remembered by his colleagues for courage and sacrifice in his coverage of bloody conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Africa. "I cannot remember another TV camaraman who was so passionate and so motivated about telling the story of those who were trapped in the suffering of human conflicts," Nigel Baker, head of news for Associated Press Television News told mourners.

The funeral in Vimbodi, 120 km west of his home town of Barcelona, drew some of Spain’s leading journalists as well as colleagues from as far away as London, New York and Cairo. Gil Moreno de Mora was buried at sundown in a hilltop cemetery on the outskirts of the town.

He and Schork had both spent much of the past two years reporting from Kosovo, where a brutal crackdown by Yugoslav forces against ethnic Albanians led to NATO Air strikes followed by a Serb military withdrawal.

Gil Moreno de Mora had been honoured last month with the British Royal Television Society’s 1999 Cameraman of the Year award for his work in the troubled Serbian province. He started his professional life as a corporate lawyer in Spain’s wealthy Catalonia region before making an abrupt career switch to war reporting.

He got his first break as a freelancer with AP in Bosnia and quickly learned the cameraman’s trade. "I’d do it for free," a Spanish newspaper quoted him as saying. "In human terms this job gives you priceless satisfaction." Gil Moreno de Mora was in Kosovo last year when the NATO bombing campaign began and persuaded Serb authorities to allow him to stay when many other foreign journalists were expelled.

At a memorial service on Friday in Kosovo’s capital Pristina, diplomats, colleagues, government officials and human rights campaigners praised the two men for helping to focus international attention on the conflict.

In a first-person account of Wednesday’s attack, Behrakis–a Greek photographer–said the convoy was nearing the front lines when armed men jumped up from the roadside and began shooting.

He saw Schork, a longtime colleague, shot in the head, then saw Gil Moreno de Mora’s car being hit before he escaped into the bush. Four Sierra Leone soldiers were also killed in the ambush, believed to have been carried out by Revolutionary United Front rebels.

Schork, a former Rhodes scholar, had reported for Reuters for a decade. His first major assignment was covering the Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq at the start of the Gulf War. He later distinguished himself with his graphic reporting from the Balkans. Schork’s body was being flown on Saturday to his home townof Washington, DC.