By Sebastian Usher BBC World media correspondent

Among those killed in the latest violence in Iraq was an employee of the Arab satellite TV station, al-Jazeera.

The station, whose offices in Afghanistan and Iraq have been hit by fire from US forces, led its news bulletin with the death.

Rashid Hamid Wali was killed during clashes in Karbala between American forces and insurgents.

Al-Jazeera showed pictures of Wali's corpse being taken away

Video footage showed his body wrapped in a blanket being laid on a stretcher.

The presenter said Wali was part of the al-Jazeera team filming clashes between American troops and gunmen belonging to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia.

Wali - an Iraqi - had arrived in Karbala just two days before. The presenter offered the station's sympathy to his family in these words: "In the name of its entire staff, al-Jazeera extends its deepest condolences to the family of the martyr. From God we come, and unto him we shall return."

Emotional interview

Al-Jazeera referred to Wali throughout its report as a "shahid" - a martyr - the same term it uses to describe civilians killed in Iraq and Palestinians killed by Israelis.

In its bulletin at 0500 GMT, the announcer spoke to a colleague of Wali's - Abdel Azim Muhammed.

In a phone interview, he describes how he was standing near Wali on the fourth floor of their hotel in Karbala when he was shot.

But after a minute or so, his emotions overcome him and he comes to a stop.

The presenter ends the interview when it becomes clear the correspondent cannot go on.

'Mistake'

Rashid Hamid Wali is not the first member of al-Jazeera's team in Iraq to be killed.

Last April, one of its top correspondents, Tariq Ayoub, was killed when a US air strike hit the al-Jazeera office in Baghdad.

The Americans said it was a targeting mistake, but al-Jazeera said it gave the Pentagon the exact location of its Baghdad office months before the outbreak of war.

Al-Jazeera's main competitor in the Arab world, al-Arabiya, also lost two of its employees in Iraq in March. It accuses US troops of shooting them at a checkpoint.

The Americans have denied responsibility. Both al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera have been heavily criticized by senior US officials for alleged anti-American bias in their reporting.

But the US rejects any suggestion that their news teams may have been targeted.

More than 25 people working for news organisations have died in Iraq since the US launched its war last year.