Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani expressed solidarity with a TV crew from public broadcaster Rai and the family of their driver, who died when their vehicle came under attack in Lebanon's southern port city of Sidon on Tuesday.
"@Tg3web crew attacked in Lebanon while reporting. Closeness to the family of the Lebanese driver who died during the attack," Tajani wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
"The committed work of journalists must always be defended, even in conflict zones," the tweet added.
In a news bulletin, war correspondent Lucia Goracci said that first an armed man and then a group of people approached the car in which she, cameraman Marco Nicois and their fixer Kinda Mahluf were travelling.
The crew's driver Ahmad Akil Hamze collapsed and died of a heart-attack when a man, who first hurled a large rock at the crew, snatched the car keys from Hamze at a petrol station, Goracci said.
Mahluf had warned Hezbollah of the Rai3 crew's presence in the area, Goracci said.
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