Steve Sweeney, a British correspondent for Russia Today, and his camera operator Ali Rida Sbeity, were injured when an Israeli air strike hit just feet away from where they were filming while wearing clearly marked press gear and with their equipment clearly visible in southern Lebanon on March 19, 2026.

The journalists, who were covering Israel’s renewed attacks after the break out of the Iran war from the Qasmiyeh bridge, north of the city of Tyre, were taken to a nearby hospital and treated for shrapnel wounds. Sbeity later told an RT anchor live on air that he believes they had been targeted, as they were standing in plain sight and their vehicle was marked as press.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said that “given the killing of around two hundred journalists in Gaza, the day’s events could not be described as accidental, especially that the missile did not hit an important strategic military facility, but rather a filming location.”

This attack comes a day after an Israeli strike on the home of Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar TV journalist Mohammad Sherri in Zuqaq al-Blat, central Beirut, killing him, his wife, and injuring his son Yasser Sherri, an editor at the Iraqi Hezbollah-affiliated Aletejah channel.