""We're all wearing the flak jackets, the helmets," recalled Collins, 37, an American cameraman with the news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP). "It says 'PRESS' ... right across your chest." Collins had his live-video feed up and was texting a colleague when the first Israeli tank shell landed. "This big, big explosion hit," Collins recalled. "My colleague, Christina, was behind me and I just heard her voice, she was screaming.""
""What happened?" yelled Christina Assi, a Lebanese photo editor for AFP. "I can't feel my legs!" Shrapnel had shredded her right calf. Collins rushed over and slid a tourniquet up her leg to try to stop the bleeding. That's when the second tank round landed. A double-tap. "It hit the car belonging to Al Jazeera," Collins recalled. "The car exploded. It was probably six feet from me.""
"Collins lives in Lebanon, but calls Vermont home in the U.S. For the past two years, he's been pressing the Israeli and American governments for some accountability. Who in the Israeli military fired the tank rounds at a group of journalists? Why? The Israeli government told NPR that "the incident is still being examined," but Collins says Israeli officials have never contacted him. He has met with the State Department and the FBI to no avail."
Dylan Collins, a 37-year-old American AFP cameraman, was videotaping near the Lebanon-Israel border in October 2023 after Hamas's Gaza attack when Israeli tank shells struck. He and six other journalists wore marked PRESS flak jackets while monitoring military activity. The first shell caused a large explosion; Christina Assi suffered shrapnel that shredded her right calf. Collins applied a tourniquet, and a second tank round hit nearby, exploding an Al Jazeera car. Collins suffered shrapnel wounds; Reuters cameraman Issam Abdallah was killed; Assi lost her right leg below the knee. Collins has sought accountability from Israeli and U.S. officials without resolution.
Read at www.npr.org
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