BEIRUT: Lebanon said Monday it had submitted a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over an Israeli strike last week that killed three journalists in the country’s south.
The strike early Friday hit a complex in the Druze-majority town of Hasbaya in south Lebanon where more than a dozen journalists from Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
The Israeli army said Friday that the strike was “under review,” maintaining it had targeted Hezbollah militants.
Lebanon submitted “a complaint to the Security Council regarding the latest Israeli attacks that targeted journalists and media facilities in Hasbaya in south Lebanon, and the Ouzai area” in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a statement from the foreign ministry said on social media platform X.
“The repeated Israeli targeting of media crews is a war crime” and Israel must be “held to account and punished,” the statement added.
Cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television, were killed in the strike on the complex in Hasbaya, relatively far from the Israel-Hezbollah war’s main flashpoints.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the attack was deliberate and both he and Information Minister Ziad Makary labelled it a war crime.
Days earlier, Al-Mayadeen said an Israeli strike hit an office the broadcaster had vacated near Ouzai in south Beirut.
Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon last month and later launched ground incursions following a year of cross-border clashes with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group over the Gaza war.
In October last year, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP’s Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.
Last November, Israeli bombardment killed Al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.
Lebanese rights groups said five more journalists and photographers working for local media had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Lebanon complains to UN over latest deadly Israel strike on journalists
https://arab.news/pwxt7
Lebanon complains to UN over latest deadly Israel strike on journalists
- Lebanon submitted “a complaint to the Security Council regarding the latest Israeli attacks that targeted journalists and media facilities in Hasbaya in south Lebanon
China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summons international media representatives
HONG KONG: China’s national security agency in Hong Kong summoned international media representatives for a “regulatory talk” on Saturday, saying some had spread false information and smeared the government in recent reports on a deadly fire and upcoming legislative elections.
Senior journalists from several major outlets operating in the city, including AFP, were summoned to the meeting by the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), which was opened in 2020 following Beijing’s imposition of a wide-ranging national security law on the city.
Through the OSNS, Beijing’s security agents operate openly in Hong Kong, with powers to investigate and prosecute national security crimes.
“Recently, some foreign media reports on Hong Kong have disregarded facts, spread false information, distorted and smeared the government’s disaster relief and aftermath work, attacked and interfered with the Legislative Council election, (and) provoked social division and confrontation,” an OSNS statement posted online shortly after the meeting said.
At the meeting, an official who did not give his name read out a similar statement to media representatives.
He did not give specific examples of coverage that the OSNS had taken issue with, and did not take questions.
The online OSNS statement urged journalists to “not cross the legal red line.”
“The Office will not tolerate the actions of all anti-China and trouble-making elements in Hong Kong, and ‘don’t say we didn’t warn you’,” it read.
For the past week and a half, news coverage in Hong Kong has been dominated by a deadly blaze on a residential estate which killed at least 159 people.
Authorities have warned against crimes that “exploit the tragedy” and have reportedly arrested at least three people for sedition in the fire’s aftermath.
Dissent in Hong Kong has been all but quashed since Beijing brought in the national security law, after huge and sometimes violent protests in 2019.
Hong Kong’s electoral system was revamped in 2021 to ensure that only “patriots” could hold office, and the upcoming poll on Sunday will select a second batch of lawmakers under those rules.
