Lloyd, a veteran correspondent with ITV News, was confirmed dead on March 23 by the British TV network ITN, which produces ITV News. The previous day, he had disappeared after coming under fire while driving to the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
Two others disappeared with Lloyd, cameraman Fred Nerac and translator Hussein Othman. They remain missing.
The three men, along with cameraman Daniel Demoustier, were traveling in two marked press vehicles in the town of Iman Anas, near Al-Zubayr, when they came under fire, ITN reported. According to Demoustier, the car he and Lloyd had been driving had been pursued by Iraqi troops who may have been attempting to surrender to the journalists. Demoustier reported that the incoming fire to their vehicles likely came from U.S. or British forces in the area.
Demoustier, who was injured when the car he was driving crashed into a ditch and caught fire, managed to escape. He said he did not see what happened to Lloyd, who was seated next to him, or to the other crew members. Lloyd’s body was recovered in a hospital in Basra days later.
An investigative article published in The Wall Street Journal in May indicated that Lloyd’s SUV and another vehicle belonging to his colleagues came under fire from U.S. Marines. The article cited accounts from U.S. troops who recalled opening fire on cars marked “TV.” Soldiers also said they believed that Iraqi suicide bombers were using the cars to attack U.S. troops.
The Journal article cited a report from a British security firm commissioned by ITN to investigate the incident saying that Lloyd’s car was hit by both coalition and Iraqi fire;the latter most likely came from behind the car, possibly after the vehicle had crashed.
The report concluded that “[t]he Iraqis no doubt mounted an attack using the ITN crew as cover, or perhaps stumbled into the U.S. forces whilst attempting to detain the ITN crew.” The report also speculated that the missing men-Nerac and Othman, who were last seen by Demoustier in another car being stopped by Iraqi forces-might have been pulled out of their car before it came under fire from coalition forces, and then Iraqi forces used the SUV to attack the coalition forces.
In April, Nerac’s wife approached U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at a NATO press conference, and he promised to do everything in his power to find out what had happened to the missing men. In late May, Centcom said that it was investigating the incident, while the British Ministry of Defense promised to open an inquiry. Neither had made public any results as of October.
In September, London’s The Daily Mirror newspaper reported the testimony of an Iraqi man named Hamid Aglan who had allegedly tried to rescue the wounded Lloyd in a civilian minibus. Aglan told the newspaper that he had picked up a lightly wounded Lloyd, who had suffered only a shoulder injury, and attempted to take him to a hospital in Basra when the minibus came under fire from a U.S. helicopter, killing Lloyd. The paper reported that the bus was also carrying wounded Iraqi soldiers.
An ITN spokesperson told CPJ that a number of elements of Aglan’s story are not consistent with ITN’s own investigation. She said an autopsy revealed that Lloyd had suffered two serious wounds that likely resulted from Iraqi and U.S. fire. She said that after he was wounded, an Iraqi civilian in a minibus had picked up Lloyd and tried to take him to a hospital in Basra. The minibus later came under U.S. attack. “It was a gunshot to the bus and [Terry] was probably in the bus,” she said. ITN investigators believe that either wound that Lloyd sustained would have been fatal.