This was the plan: to cover the war from the inside, whatever the cost. Now, with the conflict in Iraq in its 21st day, news organizations around the world are counting those costs among their own.

Considering the short duration of the war, this campaign has been the deadliest for journalists in modern history. While many expected a high number of casualties among reporters because of the sheer numbers "embedded" with allied troops and the dangers of covering war on the frontlines, the journalist death toll has been roughly 16 times that of coalition troops. To date, 11 news organization employees have been killed since March 21.

"The statistics are certainly chilling - to have this many journalists killed or missing in just three weeks of conflict," says Joel Campagna, Middle East program coordinator for the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, "News organizations had months of preparation for this conflict, months to mull the risks ... but it's difficult to prepare for something like this."

The dangers may be becoming greater. As troops and journalists shift their focus to Baghdad, urban warfare represents the next risk. Yesterday, two journalists belonging to Reuters were killed and at least three more were injured when a US tank fired on an 18-story hotel in the Iraqi capital. Separately, a correspondent for the Al Jazeera television network was killed after the organization's Baghdad office was hit by US bombs.

CNN's Walter Rodgers, who has been embedded with the 3rd Squadron of the US Army's 7th Cavalry, came under heavy fire when the squadron headed for the southern suburbs of Baghdad. His crew, traveling in a Humvee, were unharmed. "There were ambushes on both sides of the road, rocket-propelled grenades, machine-gun fire," he says. Mr. Rodgers says the high casualty rates in this conflict are "a direct consequence of the embedding process, because the Pentagon allowed many journalists to come up to the tip of the tip of the spear."

Some 600 reporters and photographers are now embedded with US and British troops in Iraq. Another 1000-plus "unilaterals," journalists not officially paired with a military unit, are in and around the country.

Mr. Campagna estimates that between 100 and 150 reporters are camped in Baghdad. Another 100 to 200 hundred are probably in Northern Iraq; and several dozen more are scattered throughout the countryside.

No casualty rate for journalists in any recent conflict compares. The four reporters killed in the 1991 Gulf War died not in combat, but in the chaos that followed the withdrawal of US troops.

Though a deadly stretch in November 2001 saw eight journalists assassinated in Afghanistan in 16 days, there have not been such a number of combat casualties since the Vietnam war - and then, the 64 journalists who lost their lives there and in Cambodia did so over almost 10 years.

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