Fears grow for journalist missing in Baghdad for four days

Foreign office officials were trying last night to trace a British-born journalist who disappeared from his hotel in Baghdad along with a photographer after a visit by Iraqi officials who were checking visas.

Matt McAllester, 33, has not been in contact with colleagues from the US newspaper Newsday since Monday night. The London-born reporter, who was brought up in Edinburgh, last contacted the newspaper four days ago when he said he would be sending an article.

His editor, Anthony Marro, said that the journalist was travelling with a photographer from the newspaper, Moises Saman. The Long Island-based publication has asked for help from the Red Cross and the Vatican's Baghdad office in locating the men.

Mr Marro said: "A lot of time has gone by now and we have not heard from them. We don't know where they are; we don't know who they are with; and we don't know if, in fact, they've left Baghdad, or where they're headed for."

He said the two members of staff – who entered Iraq with what he described as "limited visas" – had been staying in the Palestine Hotel. Witness said that Mr McAllester was rounded up with about eight other foreign journalists for expulsion from Iraq because of problems with their visas. They were expected to be driven to either the Jordanian or Syrian border.

Mr McAllester has worked for Newsday for nine years. He has headed the newspaper's United Nations bureau and was previously Middle East bureau chief.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are aware and concerned that a British journalist's whereabouts in Baghdad are unknown. We are trying to find out if he has left Iraq and crossed the border into Jordan, Syria or Kuwait."

The final victim of a helicopter crash that claimed the first Allied lives in the Iraqi conflict was named yesterday as Sergeant Les Hehir.

Sgt Hehir, 34, of 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, died when his American Sea King helicopter crashed in Kuwait last Friday. Seven other British servicemen and four US servicemen also died.

Sgt Hehir's wife, Sharon, said they had lived for each other and his death was "the worst blow imaginable". The couple, from Poole, Dorset, had two sons, Oliver, five, and William, three.

"In addition to being an outstanding and highly regarded soldier, Les was an extremely loving and devoted husband, father and son," said Mrs Hehir.

"The loss we feel is really too much to bear. We will miss him terribly. We are tremendously proud of him for being the wonderful, decent person he was, and of his military service."

There was growing concern about the whereabouts of a cameraman with the Arabic television station al-Jazeera after he went missing during a reported British attack.

The station said that it had lost contact with the cameraman during what it said was an attack by British tanks on food warehouses in the southern city of Basra.

Mohammad Saeed Hassan, the channel's co-ordinator in Basra, said al-Jazeera's team had seen 40 tanks carrying British flags at the northern entrance of the city and had started filming them. "They then started firing at the warehouse site. There was no warning," he said, adding that an unmarked car used by al-Jazeera was hit.

The channel said the cameraman had travelled from Baghdad to join the team in Basra, but did not give his nationality. Sources have told the station that the cameraman was still alive.

Two ITN journalists who were in the same convoy as Terry Lloyd when he was killed last weekend in southern Iraq are still missing.

The death toll

Combatants

American

Killed in combat: 22

Accidental and other deaths: 5

Missing: 21

Captured: 7

British

Killed in combat: 4

Accidental and other deaths: 18

Missing: 0

Iraqi

Killed in combat: About 500

Missing: N/A

Other

Killed: 57 Kurds, most from the Komala Islamic group

Civilians

American

Missing: 1 ("Newsday" journalist)

British

Killed: 1 (ITN reporter Terry Lloyd)

Missing: 4 (a "human shield", two ITN crew members, "Newsday" journalist)

Iraqi

Killed: About 350 killed in bombings, including at least 14 in Baghdad's Shaab district market

Other

Killed: 8 (one French television journalist, one Australian cameraman, five Syrian bus passengers on the Iraqi border, one Jordanian taxi driver in Baghdad)

Missing: 5

(Correspondent for an Arabic television channel, three-man team from a Dubai-based channel and a Spanish freelance photographer)