Palestinian cameraman seriously wounded in Ramallah

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières - RSF) protested today about the shooting of a Palestinian TV cameramen in the West Bank town of Ramallah and said it suspected the Israeli army was opening fire on press vehicles "to intimidate journalists." RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard called on the Israeli authorities to "once again, as we have asked with previous such incidents," to investigate and identify who was responsible for the shooting and serious wounding of Carlos Handal, a Palestinian working for the Egyptian station Nile TV. He said that as the fighting became more serious, journalists, especially in Ramallah, should be "extremely careful about their movements." An RSF fact-finding missing to the area last summer noted that more than 30 journalists had been wounded by gunfire, mostly by the Israeli army, over the previous 10 months. So far this year, one journalist has been killed by shooting from an Israeli tank and at least four others have been injured.  Cameraman Handal was seriously wounded as he was driving at dawn today towards the Lions Square in Ramallah. He was filming from the window of a mini-van clearly marked "TV" and driven by his colleague Raed el-Helu, when he was hit in the throat by a bullet that came through the windscreen. Other bullets also hit the vehicle. Handal was taken to the private Arab Medical Center and put into intensive care. El-Helu said the shots came from an Israeli sniper. The Israeli army today declared Ramallah a military zone and the last journalists able to get into the town did so the previous evening. Raffaele Ciriello, an Italian freelance photographer for the daily Corriere della Sera, was killed on 13 March by six bullets fired from an Israeli tank near Ramallah's central Al-Manara Square as he was covering an Israeli incursion into the city. With a journalist from the Italian TV station Rai Uno, Amedeo Ricucci, he was in an alleyway off the main street, behind a group of armed Palestinians, when the tank crew, 150 metres away, opened fire. Ambulances could not reach the scene because of the fierce gunfire, so Ciriello was taken to the Arab Care hospital, where he died before he could be operated on.