An Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon on Saturday killed three journalists covering the ongoing Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
The dead include Hezbollah's al-Manar TV correspondent Ali Shoeib, who had covered southern Lebanon for nearly three decades. Also killed were Al-Mayadeen TV reporter Fatima Ftouni and her brother Mohammed, a video journalist, in the Jezzine district.
The Israeli military accused Shoeib of being a Hezbollah intelligence operative and claimed he was exposing locations of Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. Israel provided no evidence for these allegations.
Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun condemned the strike as a violation of laws protecting journalists. This brings the total number of media personnel killed in Lebanon this year to five.
The conflict began when Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on March 2 to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.