(Beirut) The Lebanese army accused Israel on the night of Thursday to Friday of having killed a member of a “team of journalists” who was covering tensions in the south of the country between Hezbollah, Palestinian factions and Israel.
Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, as well as other Palestinian factions, have exchanged daily cross-border fire with Israel since the Palestinian Islamist movement launched its attack on Israeli soil on October 7, triggering a war that has left several thousand dead. .
Thursday, “a team of seven journalists covering the news […] near the Israeli enemy’s al-Abad site and the (Lebanese) town of Hula, was targeted by machine guns” from Israeli forces, “killing one person and injuring another,” the Lebanese army said in a press release.
Lebanon’s peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) said earlier that one person was killed after civilians were caught in cross-border shooting in the south.
UNIFIL, which acts as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel, added in a statement that the Lebanese army had requested its help “for seven people stranded near” the border during a “major exchange of fire”, and a spokesperson of the UN organization confirmed that they were civilians.
“One person lost their life […] and the others were rescued,” UNIFIL said, adding that it had asked Israeli forces to suspend shooting “to facilitate the rescue operation.”
The Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) previously said Israeli forces “cornered” a group of civilians, including journalists, “near the town of Hula, and opened fire nearby.”
The civilians were “trapped by the gunfire,” the agency added, before indicating that the Lebanese armed forces had rescued them.
Lebanese media said the targeted group included Iranian journalists. Iranian state television then declared that the Iranian journalists were “alive and in good health”, without further details.
The Israeli army said it was examining the circumstances of the fatal shooting.
At least 22 people have been killed in southern Lebanon since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, most of them fighters, but also at least four civilians, including a Reuters journalist. At least three people were killed near the border on the Israeli side.