The funeral of three Lebanese journalists, including a veteran correspondent for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV channel, was held today in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
In the rain, several hundred people gathered at a makeshift cemetery in the neighborhood, which has been bombed by Israel, to pay their last tribute to Fatima Fatimah Ftuni, a journalist for Al-Mayadeen, a channel affiliated to the Shiite movement, her brother, cameraman Mohammed Ftouni, and Al-Manar correspondent Ali Soyeb, according to an AFP reporter.
The three journalists were killed yesterday, Saturday, in an airstrike that targeted their car in the southern Lebanese region of Jezin, according to a military source and the media they worked for.
The Israeli army yesterday accused Suib of being a member of al-Radwan, an elite Hezbollah unit operating “under the cover of a journalist”, without providing any evidence. The military has not commented on the deaths of Fatima and Mohamed Founi.
The attack was condemned by the Lebanese authorities, who called it a “flagrant crime”, as well as by Hezbollah and Iran.
“Journalists should never be targeted in war zones, even when they have links to the parties involved in the conflict,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said today.
“If it does turn out that these journalists were deliberately targeted by the Israeli army, then this is an extremely serious incident and a flagrant violation of international law,” he told public broadcaster France 3.
As of 7 October 2023, Israel has killed 210 journalists in the Gaza Strip and 11 in Lebanon, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Since Lebanon became embroiled in the regional war on March 2 due to an attack by pro-Iranian Hezbollah against Israel, nearly 1,200 people have been killed in massive Israeli raids and more than a million have been displaced.
