A cameraman for Al-Jazeera television was shot in Nablus, and a reporter with Al Hurrah television was also shot by Israeli forces today in separate incidents. These attacks follow a late-night attack by Israeli forces on the headquarters of the main Palestinian News Agency, WAFA, in which media equipment was destroyed and one reporter was injured by gas.
Wail Tanous was filming Al-Jazeera anchorwoman Guevara Albudeiri live in the northern West Bank city of Nablus early Wednesday afternoon when an Israeli military jeep pulled up and rammed the anchorwoman in the middle of her broadcast. The soldiers then proceeded to shoot the cameraman, Wail Tanous, in the leg. He was taken to a nearby hospital and is currently being treated, local sources reported.
Faten Al-Wan, a reporter with Al Hurrah television, was also shot Wednesday by Israeli soldiers in Nablus. Dr. Ghassan Handa, head of the Medical Relief in Nablus, reported that Al-Wan was injured by a rubber-coated bullet and transferred to a hospital in Nablus.
Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers ransacked the offices of the main Palestinian News Agency, WAFA, damaging equipment and injuring reporter Mona Al Fares when they fired tear gas into her office.
Today’s incidents are merely the latest in at least seven incidents in which Israeli forces directly targeted reporters covering the ongoing conflict in the last several weeks.
In Lebanon, at least seven journalists have been seriously wounded, and Israeli bombs directly targeted the headquarters of Al-Manar television, a station which Israeli spokesmen said was ‘marked for death’, as the television station funded by the Hezbollah resistance group.
One of the injured journalists, with the Lebanese station New TV, said that the well-marked New TV vehicle sustained more damage than any other, “which suggests to us that it was a targeted attack against our vehicle.”
Three employees with Al-Manar, the TV station operated by the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, sustained minor injuries when its premises in the Shiite suburb of Haret Hreik in south Beirut were struck by a missile during an Israeli air raid. The station said its antenna was not destroyed and broadcasting was not interrupted. “This flagrant and barbaric aggression is targeted at all the Lebanese media,” the station said.
An Al-Manar correspondent was meanwhile hit during the bombardment of Qasmiye bridge in the south of the country several days ago.
Said ‘Reporters Without Borders’, an international press freedom organization based in France, “It is unacceptable that journalists should be treated as combatants when they are covering clashes. We point out that this would not be the first time the Israeli army has deliberately targeted journalists.”
And in Gaza, attacks against journalists have been ongoing and deliberate, with a number of journalists pointing out the fact that Israeli soldiers pointed guns directly at them and fired, even while the journalists were clearly marked and in close range.
Two days ago, a news crew from the U.S. based ‘Fox’ News station were shot at by Israeli forces while reporting live from Dir al Balah, Gaza, leading one of the U.S. based commentators to refer to the Israelis as ‘bad guys with guns’ — a rare twist of events for a station that has often been accused by media analysts of being biased toward Israel in its coverage of the Middle East.
Reporters of Maan, AFP, Reuters and other stations have been repeatedly attacked by Israeli soldiers while covering the weekly non-violent anti-Wall protests in the West Bank village of Bil’in, and reporters also report being barred from reporting on the event.
Walid al-Umari, the bureau chief for the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television, known to many as ‘the CNN of the Middle East’, was taken prisoner by Israeli forces twice on Monday as he was reporting on the latest developments in the crisis with Lebanon from a village in northern Israel.
After being released late on Monday, al-Umari, in a live telephone interview broadcast on the satellite channel, accused Israel of "interfering with Aljazeera’s work".
Reporters Without Borders recently issued a condemnation the action of the Israeli troops who shot and wounded Palestinian news photographers Hamid Al Khur and Mohammad Al Zaanoun on 7 and 8 July while they were covering clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“Khur and Zaanoun were both wearing yellow vests that clearly identified them as journalists, so there was no way they could have been mistaken for combatants,” Reporters Without Borders said, calling on the Israeli authorities to carry out investigations to establish how they came to be shot.
Khur, a photographer with the Turkish news agency Ihlas, was shot twice by Israeli soldiers on 7 July while covering clashes between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. Khur, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time, was hit first in the chest and then in the right arm. He was initially taken to Kamal Adwan hospital, and from there to a hospital in Jerusalem the next day.
Zaanoun, a photographer with the Palestinian online news agency Ma’an, was working in the district of al-Zaitoun, south of Gaza City, when Israeli tanks arrived on the morning of 8 July. He was wounded while photographing the bodies of two Palestinian militants who had been killed in the course of the Israeli incursion. He continued to take photographs until shot in the leg and stomach by an Israeli sniper. He was taken to an Israeli hospital where he is said to be in a critical condition.
