A Tg3 crew was attacked in Lebanon, near Sidon: the local driver had a heart attack and died.
The news comes from the 12 o'clock edition of Tg3: first an armed man and then a group of people approached and began to threaten the journalists, reports the correspondent Lucia Goracci. At that point the driver felt ill and died despite cardiac massage . The fixer, or the person who helps establish contacts in war zones, had reported the presence of the journalists to Hezbollah.
"It was 9 this morning - said live the journalist Lucia Goracci, sent to the field in Lebanon together with the operator Marco Nicois, who remained unharmed - and we were filming in Jiyeh, where our stringer had reported our presence to the local Hezbollah. We were working without problems, people were talking to us. Then a man appeared, went towards Nicois trying to snatch the camera from him ".
"We got back in the car," he continues, "ready to leave quickly, but other men arrived and started pushing us and the car. The man from before tried to throw a large stone at us. There were people holding him back and people pushing him. We drove away quickly, in the car, it seemed like they were chasing us. When Ahmad stopped at a gas station now outside Ghazieh, the man came at us, snatched the keys from Ahmad, tried to break Marco's camera by climbing in through the open windows, while no one came to help us."
"When Ahmad tried to calm him down by getting out of the car - Goracci continues - that's when he collapsed on the ground. We immediately called for help, the ambulance arrived, we followed it. Unfortunately, when we reached it, they told us that he was dead after long attempts to revive him."
The crew proceeded with all permits in order from the local authorities.
"Condemnation and indignation" from Rai, which expresses "closeness and support to the family of Ahmad Akil Hamzeh, the driver who died of a heart attack during the attack, and confirms that it has implemented all security measures for our journalist Lucia Goracci, engaged with her crew in an extraordinary work of documentation of the ongoing war".
" Solidarity with the Tg3 crew attacked in Lebanon during a reportage ," writes Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani in X. "Closeness to the family of the Lebanese driver who died during the attack. The commitment of journalists must always be defended, even in places of conflict. The right to information is a cornerstone of democracies."
(Unioneonline/D)