MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russian RT TV Channel reporters came under fire near the Syrian city of Kobani, no one is injured, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
“Our TV crew of Arabic and English RT came under fire near Syrian city of Kobani. Thanks God, no one was hurt,” Simonyan wrote.
According to RT press service, journalists just got out of a car and have not had enough time to put body armors on as the shooting started. Few bullets fell nearby, but one of the reporters said that most likely the shooting was not targeted at them.
Correspondent Murad Gadziev, Arabic office correspondent Amin Dergami, cameramen Ruslan Lebedev and Igor Zavidei, assistants Konstantin Bolshakov and Andrey Peleshok were among those who came under attack.
Earlier this year RT employees have come under fire in Syria and in Ukraine. Freelance cameraman Fedor Zavaleikov got severely injured while working in Mariupol in May.
For the past several weeks Kobani, one of the largest towns in the Kurdish region of Syria bordering Turkey, has been under attack of the Islamic State (IS) militants.
Local citizens, mostly Kurdish, are trying to protect the city using all possible means, while IS militants possess all kinds of weapons, including tanks and heavy artillery.
More than 400 people have died in clashes between the IS and Kurdish fighters in Kobani, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Some 200,000 refugees have crossed into Turkey to flee the IS threat.
The IS jihadist group, known for proclaiming hardline Islamic fundamentalism, has been fighting the Syrian government since 2012. In 2014, it seized vast areas across Iraq and Syria and proclaimed an Islamic caliphate on the territories that have fallen under its control, forcing thousands members of religious minorities to flee. More than 30,000 militants are believed to be fighting for the IS.
