Near-Miss: Missile Strikes Close to Russian TV Reporter During Live Broadcast in Lebanon

RT journalist Steve Sweeney is captured on video instinctively ducking as the ominous sound of an incoming missile interrupts his live broadcast on Thursday.

Seconds later, a missile lands perilously close, triggering an explosion that scatters debris and dust into the air, seemingly toppling both Sweeney and his cameraman, Ali Rida.

The pair were covering the aftermath of a bridge’s destruction in southern Lebanon, an area targeted by Israeli forces amidst their conflict with Hezbollah, a group supported by Iran.

In a subsequent video released by RT, Sweeney described the incident as “an Israeli precision strike from a fighter jet.”

“We’ve received hospital treatment for our injuries,” the British journalist reported.

“I had a shrapnel wound in my arm, deeply embedded in the bustle here that’s been taken out, and here it is in this pot here.”

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, was banned in the European Union in 2022 for systematically broadcasting disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The strikes in Lebanon have displaced more than 1 million people — roughly 20 per cent of the population — according to the Lebanese government.

It says more than 1000 people have been killed and Israel says it has killed more than 500 Hezbollah militants.

In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire.

Four people were also killed in the occupied West Bank overnight by an Iranian missile strike, according to officials.

Iran intensified its attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf on Thursday, raising the stakes in a war that is sending shock waves through the global economy.

The strikes, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a key Iranian gas field, sent fuel prices soaring and risked drawing Iran’s Arab neighbours directly into the conflict. 

Since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, Iran’s top leaders have been killed in airstrikes and the country’s military capabilities have been severely degraded.

Still, Iran — now led by the son of the supreme leader killed in the war’s opening salvo — remains capable of missile and drone attacks rattling its Gulf Arab neighbours and a global economy dependent on the energy they produce.

– Reported with Associated Press

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