Six journalists attacked by police

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières - RSF) protested today against a police attack on six journalists at the site of a housing disaster and called on the Lebanese authorities to investigate and punish those responsible."This act of indiscipline comes just a few days before the Arab League summit in Beirut and the journalists were apparently just doing their job," RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard said in a letter to Lebanese interior minister Elias el-Murr. "Journalists in Lebanon must be allowed to work in conditions of complete security."    Photographers Wael Ladki, of the daily As Safir, Ali Lamaa, of Al Sharq, reporter Muhamed Assi, of An Nahar, Samir and Said Baytamuni, of the LBC TV station, and Khalil Hassan of Daily Star, were hit by police on 23 March 2002 at the ruins of a building that had just collapsed, killing four people, in Beirut's Marzraa neighbourhood. Ladki said several policemen hit him in the face while he was taking pictures of he scene from atop a bulldozer with permission from a police captain. Lamaa said they pushed him "very roughly" to make him come down off the bulldozer. He said the flash of Hassan's camera had been damaged and his film seized.