JERUSALEM/MOSCOW: An international media association on Wednesday criticised an “unprovoked assault” by Israeli police on journalists in Jerusalem, which it said left a CNN producer with a fractured wrist.

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) said police officers on Tuesday night “unnecessarily and aggressively repelled a group of journalists who were doing their jobs, documenting individuals who were praying outside the walls of the Old City”.

It said police detained several journalists, damaging photographic equipment and confiscating memory cards.

“During the assault, one Israeli officer fractured the wrist of a CNN producer,” the FPA said in a statement.

Russia accuses Israel of ‘targeted’ strike that wounded TV crew in Lebanon

“None of this is acceptable,” added the association, which represents hundreds of journalists in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

A photographer at the scene said a small group of journalists had been documenting Muslims trying to perform the evening Taraweeh prayers outside the Old City walls, when a group of police suddenly arrived and “violently attacked the worshippers and journalists covering the event.”

A foreign journalist said that police “beat the CNN producer and some other journalists with batons,” adding that “at least one Palestinian was detained”.

Israeli authorities have closed holy sites in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem’s Old City for security reasons since the outbreak of the Middle East war on Feb 28. The FPA called on the police to “immediately take action against the officers involved in this unprovoked assault and to act in the future to safeguard press freedoms, rather than trample upon them.”

In an X post, the Union of Journalists in Israel said it was “appalled” by the police conduct and urged the police commissioner to “immediately suspend the officers involved”.

RT crew injured

Russia on Thursday accused Israel of deliberately targeting a TV crew from state-run RT broadcaster reporting from southern Lebanon with a strike that wounded a reporter and a cameraman.

“The crew’s clothing clearly read ‘press’ and they were carrying only cameras and microphones... All these circumstances indicate that the attack on the journalists was deliberate and targeted,” the Russian foreign ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.

The Israeli military said the TV crew was operating in an area where a warning to leave had been issued. It regularly says it “has never and will never deliberately target journalists”.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2026