AFP demands answers after Israel envoy comments on 2023 attack on reporters in Lebanon
Agence France-Presse has demanded an explanation from Israel's ambassador to France after he admitted on French TV that his country was behind a 2023 attack on reporters in Lebanon.
A Reuters journalist was killed and two AFP reporters were seriously wounded when they came under fire in southern Lebanon close to the border with Israel in October 2023.
Both news agencies and several NGOs concluded Israeli forces were behind the attack, but Israel has never formally acknowledged responsibility and has told AFP several times that the incident was still under review.
Israel's ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, however conceded on a program broadcast late Thursday that Israeli forces had made a "mistake" in firing on the group.
He insisted that the reporters "were not targeted because they were journalists" as "the soldiers on the ground thought that they were terrorists".
AFP's news director Phil Chetwynd wrote a formal letter to Zarka on Friday demanding more details.
"In our view, these remarks amount to the first public acknowledgment by an official Israeli representative that the two strikes which hit a clearly identified group of journalists were carried out by Israeli forces," Chetwynd wrote.
"AFP is seeking precise and substantiated answers regarding what you yourself have described as a 'mistake'."
Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in the strike, which wounded six other journalists.
They included AFP's Dylan Collins and Christina Assi. The latter lost a leg in the attack.
"The Israeli military has made no formal acknowledgment of responsibility to AFP, to Dylan Collins, or to Christina Assi," wrote Chetwynd.
"How do you account for this complete absence of official acknowledgment, given that you yourself clearly describe this as a 'mistake'?"
- Multiple inquiries -
An AFP investigation concluded that two Israeli tank shells had been fired from the Jordeikh area in northern Israel, on the border with southern Lebanon.
Other investigations by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders all came to the same conclusion.
"Why has the position you set out publicly never been communicated directly to AFP in response to its formal requests," Chetwynd asked in his letter.
The CPJ's regional director, Sara Qudah, said the attack appeared to be a war crime, adding that the ambassador's interview had failed to answer the key question of why clearly identified journalists had been repeatedly targeted.
"Israeli authorities must release all evidence supporting their claim that Israeli soldiers misidentified the journalists," Qudah said in a statement.
Rights groups and media outlets regularly accuse Israel of deliberately targeting journalists.
The CPJ documented 129 media workers killed across the world last year, with Israel behind 86 of those deaths.
Source: Agence France Presse
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