On Tuesday last week, family members, friends and colleagues of Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk gathered at Kiev to remember the fifth anniversay of his death in Baghdad.  After a church ceremony flowers were laid on his grave and a toast drunk to him in accordance with local custom. 

Taras was killed along with Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso by an American tank shell fired at the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel. The shell also severly injured his Reuters colleagues Samia Nakhoul, Paul Pasquale and Faleh Kheiber.

Taras’s widow Lydia and nephew Andriy stand at his grave.

The circumstances of Taras’s death are still an issue in Ukraine and the memorial celebrations were prominently covered by local television and newspapers. 

A Ukrainian man places his handprint on a portrait of the late journalist Taras Protsyuk near the U.S. embassy in Kiev, April 8, 2006 on the third anniversary of the death of the journalist killed when a U.S. tank shell hit the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as troops entered the Iraqi capital in 2003. REUTERS/Ivan Chernichkin

I, for one, will never forget that day.

Taras and son Denis - picture by Sergei Karazy.

My thanks to Mykhailo Chernichkin for the graveside pictures and to Sergei Karazy and Yann Tessier who were there.