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A Reuters cameraman killed in the Israeli bombing of southern Lebanon was buried in his hometown on Saturday in a funeral procession attended by hundreds of people.
Draped in a Lebanese flag, Issam Abdallah’s body was carried on a stretcher through the streets of the southern city of Khiam, from his family home to the local cemetery.
Dozens of Lebanese journalists and legislators attended the funeral.
Abdallah was killed on Friday afternoon near the village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon when an Israeli projectile fell on a gathering of international journalists covering the exchange of fire along the border between Israeli troops and members of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Lebanese army said in a statement on Saturday that Israeli troops fired a projectile the day before hitting a civilian car used by journalists, killing Abdallah and wounding others. The military said other areas in southern Lebanon at the time were attacked by a helicopter gunship and Israeli artillery, including the outskirts of the villages of Marwaheen, Kfar Chouba, Aita al-Shaab and Odaisseh.
Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry asked Beirut’s mission to the United Nations to file a complaint against Israel over Friday’s bombing, calling it a flagrant violation and crime against freedom of opinion and the press. The statement was published by the state-run National News Agency.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told The Associated Press in Jerusalem on Saturday: We are aware of the incident with the Reuters journalist and are investigating it.
Hecht did not confirm that the journalists had been hit by Israeli projectiles, but called the incident tragic and added that we are very sorry for their deaths.
Reuters said in a statement that two of its journalists, Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, were wounded in the same bombing, while Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV said its cameraman Elie Brakhya and reporter Carmen Joukhadar were also wounded.
The French international news agency, Agence France-Presse, said two of its journalists were also injured. They were identified as photographer Christina Assi and videojournalist Dylan Collins.
AFP reported on Saturday that Assi needed blood transfusions at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where she was hospitalized.
The border between Lebanon and Israel has seen sporadic acts of violence since Saturday’s surprise attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Israel.
Journalists from several countries have flocked to Lebanon to follow the situation.
The international monitoring group Reporters Without Borders said on Saturday that Abdallah, 37, was the seventh journalist killed covering the war between Israel and Hamas in a week, including six killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that followed the deadly Gaza offensive. Hamas of October 7. .
The organization stated that, according to several sources, Abdallah and the others accompanying him were clearly identifiable as journalists.
Abdallah had worked for Reuters in Beirut for 16 years and had covered other conflicts, including the war in Ukraine.
A week before his death, he had posted on his social media accounts a tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist for the Al Jazeera satellite channel who was killed while covering an Israeli military incursion into the occupied West Bank.
(Only the title and image of this report may have been modified by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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