Killing of al-Mayadeen journalists spurs widespread outcry in Lebanon

The killing of two journalists reporting for the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV Tuesday spurred a widespread outcry in Lebanon.

Correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari were killed in Tayr Harfa by an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon.

“It was direct targeting. It was not a coincidence,” said Ghassan bin Jiddo, director of the TV channel, holding back his tears in a live broadcast. They join "the martyrs of Gaza,” he said.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the strike. “This aggression proves again that there are no limits to Israel's crimes whose main goal is to silence the media that is revealing its crimes,” Mikati said.

“Treacherous Israel is targeting media crews in south Lebanon,” Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary said, describing the strike as “outrageous.”

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil, the Kataeb party, and the Lebanese Forces also condemned the attack.

Hezbollah's media office vowed in a statement that the killing of the journalists “will not pass without retaliation.”

It later responded by attacking an Israeli military intelligence unit in the Manara settlement, and confirmed that the attack has caused casualties.

Hamas also condemned the attack, calling it in a statement "a continuation of the savage war on our Palestinian people and our Arab and Muslim nation.”

In her last live report shortly before her death, Omar cited a Hezbollah statement issued Tuesday morning claiming a strike on a house in the northern Israeli city of Metula, where Israeli soldiers were stationed. Hezbollah said was in retaliation for Israel targeting civilian homes in south Lebanon.

“We are still in the early hours of the day, and we are following any developments that might happen,” were some of the last words that Omar spoke.

Local media reported several other Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.

Another strike on a home in the border village of Kfarkela killed a woman and seriously wounded her granddaughter.

Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon on Oct. 14 killed Reuters videojournalist Issam Abduallah and wounded other journalists from France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV.