BEIRUT: A prominent Lebanese footballer has died of a bullet wound sustained last month during a funeral for one of the victims of the Beirut port blast, his club said Friday.
Mohamed Atwi, 32, played as a midfielder for a number of Lebanese clubs and won the national league three times with Beirut’s Ansar, his club for almost a decade.
“A sad day for sport... a great loss for Lebanese football,” Wael Chehayeb, an official with his latest club Al-Akhaa Al-Ahly, posted on social media.
Tributes poured in for the player, who was also capped three times for his country.
Atwi was hit in the head by a bullet as he walked on a street in a Beirut neighborhood last month.
Initial reports suggested he was struck by a falling bullet fired in the air from a nearby procession mourning one of the firefighters killed in the August 4 port explosion.
Atwi’s family however has demanded a full investigation into the circumstances of his death, over which no arrests have been made.
Shooting in the air for celebrations and funerals is common in Lebanon despite recurring injuries from falling bullets.
Lebanese footballer dies of bullet wound
https://arab.news/yy33m
Lebanese footballer dies of bullet wound
- Mohamed Atwi, 32, played as a midfielder for a number of Lebanese clubs and won the national league three times with Beirut’s Ansar, his club for almost a decade
- Tributes poured in for the player, who was also capped three times for his country
Ex-heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua injured in Nigeria highway crash
- Pictures circulating online showed a shirtless Joshua — a British national of Nigerian heritage — surrounded by what appeared to be broken window glass
LAGOS: Former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua suffered “minor injuries” in a fatal car accident that killed two people Monday, Nigerian police said.
Pictures circulating online showed a shirtless Joshua — a British national of Nigerian heritage — surrounded by what appeared to be broken window glass on the seats around him.
The circumstances around the wreck are “currently being investigated,” said police in Ogun state, just north of Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos, which throngs with visitors from across the country and diaspora each December.
Joshua “was seated in the rear of the vehicle, sustained minor injuries and (is) receiving medical attention,” the police statement said.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn told Daily Mail Sport he was on a family holiday and “awoke to the news of this incident.”
“We are trying to contact Anthony and in the meantime we don’t want to speculate on how he is but thankfully he appears OK from what I have seen in the images,” he said.
Police said the wreck, in which two people in Joshua’s car were killed, occurred around 11:00 am, in the town of Makun, along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps said in a statement that the Lexus Joshua was riding in “was suspected to be traveling beyond the legally prescribed speed limit on the corridor, lost control during an overtaking maneuver and crashed into a stationary truck... by the side of the road.”
Witness Adeniyi Orojo told Punch news Joshua was traveling in a two-vehicle convoy, and was seated behind his driver.
“The passenger beside the driver and the person beside Joshua died on the spot,” he said.
The police gave the same toll, saying the two killed were “passengers in the vehicle” who “lost their lives at the scene.”
The names of the victims have not been released but a spokesman for the Ogun state governor said preliminary reports indicated they were “two male foreign nationals.”
Earlier this month Joshua knocked out YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in a Netflix-backed bout in Miami.
The former Olympic champion Joshua has since been linked with a fight against compatriot and fellow former world champion Tyson Fury.
Joshua’s last fight prior to the match with Paul was a fifth round knockout loss to fellow Briton Daniel Dubois in September last year.
