French 32-year-old journalist is killed in Ukraine | Nikhilodien
French 32-year-old journalist is killed in Ukraine | Nikhilodien
The French news
broadcaster BFM TV said a 32-year-old French journalist was killed Monday in
eastern Ukraine, fatally hit by shell shrapnel while covering a Ukrainian
evacuation operation.
BFM TV said its journalist Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff
was killed as he was "covering a humanitarian operation in an armored
vehicle" near Sievierodonetsk, a key city in the Donbas region that is
being hotly contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces. He had worked for six
years for the French television channel.
French President Emmanuel
Macron paid tribute to Leclerc-Imhoff on Twitter.
He "was in Ukraine to show the reality of the war. Aboard a humanitarian
bus, alongside civilians forced to flee to escape Russian bombs, he was fatally
shot," Macron tweeted.
Macron
expressed condolences to his family, relatives and colleagues and spoke of
"France's unconditional support" to "those who carry out the
difficult mission of informing in theaters of operations."
French
Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna called the journalist's death "deeply
shocking."
"France
demands that a transparent inquiry be launched as soon as possible to shed full
light on the circumstances of this tragedy," she added.
Earlier
Monday, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, announced
Leclerc-Imhoff's death in a Telegram post, saying that Russian forces fired on
an armored vehicle that was traveling to pick up people for evacuation.
"Shrapnel
from the shells pierced the vehicle's armor, fatally wounding an accredited
French journalist in the neck who was reporting on the evacuation. The patrol
officer was saved by his helmet," he wrote.
As
a result of the attack, the evacuation was called off, Haidai said.
He
posted an image of Leclerc-Imhoff's Ukrainian press accreditation, and images
of what he said was the aftermath of the attack.
Ukrainian
Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said another French journalist was
wounded along with a Ukrainian woman who was accompanying them.
He said Leclerc-Imhoff's body was evacuated to the nearby Ukrainian-held city
of Bakhmut, from where it will be taken to the central city of Dnipro for an
autopsy.
He
said the patrol officer accompanying the vehicle was hit by shrapnel in the
head and taken to a military hospital.
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