DUBAI: Several Lebanese Army soldiers attacked Al-Hadath reporter Mahmoud Shukr during a live broadcast Wednesday while he was covering an accident involving a truck in the Kahala area on the Beirut-Damascus Road, the news outlet has alleged in a tweet.
In a video of the incident posted on Twitter on Wednesday, what appears to be members of the Lebanese Army are seen pushing Shukr and covering the camera with their hands as some of the equipment falls to the ground.
عناصر من الجيش اللبناني تعتدي على مراسل #الحدث محمود شكر أثناء البث المباشر وخلال تغطيته لحادث انقلاب شاحنة تابعة لـ #حزب_الله في منطقة الكحالة على طريق #بيروت #دمشق#لبنان pic.twitter.com/kQ32df0cM0
— ا لـحـدث (@AlHadath) August 9, 2023
The accident involved an overturned truck, which reportedly belongs to Hezbollah. Several local militants armed with guns had gathered at the accident site, according to media reports. There was reportedly gunfire exchanged between the militants and people traveling in the truck, resulting in the intervention of the Lebanese Army.
Journalists have regularly been targeted by factions as tensions rise in Lebanon.
Just last month, MTV journalist Dima Sadek was sentenced to a year in prison as the result of a lawsuit filed by the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Gebran Bassil, who accused her of defamation and slander three years ago.
Radwan Mortada, a journalist at Al-Akhbar newspaper, was sentenced to a 13-month prison sentence, in absentia, on charges of defaming the Lebanese Army, in November 2021.
Nada Homsi, a US-based journalist, was also detained in 2021, allegedly arbitrarily, leading to appeals from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Journalists and activists in Lebanon are increasingly under attack by state and non-state actors, the HRW said.
More than 100 media workers have been attacked by non-state actors between the start of the social protests in October 2019 and November 2021, according to the Samir Kassir Eyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom, a press-freedom watchdog in Beirut.
SKeyes said that they documented 80 assaults by government agents on media workers doing their jobs, primarily covering protests, between October 2019 and March 2021.
