Photographers Blog

For those who may have missed it, this is the Reuters story reporting the killing of Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. It is a tragic loss and I would like to add my condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.

Reuters cameraman killed in Gaza 

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – A Reuters cameraman was killed in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in what appeared to be an Israeli military strike.

Fadel Shana, 23, was covering events in the enclave for the international news agency on a day of intense violence when 16 other Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were also killed.

Two youths passing by died in the same explosion that killed Shana, witnesses said. The cameraman had stepped from his car to film an Israeli tank dug in several hundred meters (yards) away.

Video from Shana’s camera showed the tank opening fire. Two seconds after the shot raises dust around its gun, the tape goes blank — seemingly at the moment Shana was hit.

On Tuesday last week, family members, friends and colleagues of Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk gathered at Kiev to remember the fifth anniversay of his death in Baghdad.  After a church ceremony flowers were laid on his grave and a toast drunk to him in accordance with local custom. 

Taras was killed along with Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso by an American tank shell fired at the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel. The shell also severly injured his Reuters colleagues Samia Nakhoul, Paul Pasquale and Faleh Kheiber.

Taras’s widow Lydia and nephew Andriy stand at his grave.

The circumstances of Taras’s death are still an issue in Ukraine and the memorial celebrations were prominently covered by local television and newspapers.