At least one journalist was killed and six others were injured in shelling by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, according to eyewitnesses and journalists at the scene.
On Friday, Reuters news agency confirmed that videographer Issam Abdullah was killed in the attack.
Reuters said in a statement: “We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region, and supporting Essam’s family and colleagues.”
She added that two other Reuters journalists, Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazih, were injured.
The Israeli army targeted a group of journalists, including the Al Jazeera crew. A colleague from another agency was killed and two of our colleagues at Al Jazeera were injured, in addition to a number of others.
– Ali Hashem Ali Hashem (@alihashem_tv) October 13, 2023
Al Jazeera said that photographer Eli Brakhia and reporter Carmen Joukhadar were among the wounded.
He added: “The tank shell hit them directly. It was terrible.” Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Hashem from Alma Chaab in Lebanon reported that the situation there was – I cannot explain it, I cannot describe it, adding that the team of reporters was clearly marked as journalists.
The French news agency said that two of its reporters were among those injured. Agence France-Presse, citing a Lebanese security source, reported that the bombing came after an attempt by a Palestinian faction to infiltrate the Israeli border from southern Lebanon. The Associated Press, citing a photographer who was present, said the attack left a nearby car charred.
The Lebanese Press Editors Syndicate condemned the “targeting” of journalists and described Abdullah’s killing as a “deliberate crime.”
Rising tensions
Since the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a lightning attack into southern Israel from the blockaded Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 1,300 people, Israel has carried out relentless bombardment of the blockaded coastal enclave. At least 1,799 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, according to Palestinian authorities.
With Israel expected to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, there are growing fears that the fighting could spread to other fronts in the region. Armed groups in southern Lebanon have exchanged fire intermittently across Israel’s northern border, with clashes this week being the bloodiest since 2006.
Residents of northern Israel and southern Lebanon are watching the cross-border exchanges with horror, fearing a potential escalation that could lead to a full-scale conflict between Israel and the massive Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which called for the Israeli strike on Friday. “A heinous crime” that will not pass “without an appropriate response.”
“Our lives have stopped,” Mary, a 28-year-old wedding planner from a village in southern Lebanon near Bint Jbeil, told Al Jazeera. “We don’t know when they will return to normal. We wonder: What’s next?
Hezbollah is armed with an arsenal of long-range missiles and years of combat experience gained from fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad’s government in the Syrian war. Its participation would turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a two-front war that could exhaust the capacity of the Israeli military and lead to greater participation from Iranian-backed regional groups.
Israeli bombing killed three Hezbollah members earlier this week, and Hezbollah bombed an Israeli site with an anti-tank missile on Wednesday. But so far, the two sides have limited themselves to mutual responses that have allowed them to avoid the kind of all-out confrontation that could come at a high price.
Two journalists killed in Gaza
According to press freedom groups and media networks, at least six journalists have been killed in Gaza since Israel began bombing the blockaded territory on Saturday.
Saeed Al-Taweel, Mohammed Sobh and Hisham Al-Nawajeha were killed in an air strike on Tuesday.
Ibrahim Muhammad Lafi and Muhammad Jarghoun were shot while covering them on Saturday, according to the Mada Center and the Palestinian Journalists Support Committee.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Saturday that Muhammad al-Salhi was shot dead on the border east of the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
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