GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — An Associated Press video journalist and a freelance Palestinian translator working with him were killed Wednesday when ordnance left over from Israeli-Hamas fighting exploded as they were reporting on the aftermath of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Simone Camilli and Ali Shehda Abu Afash died when an unexploded missile believed to have been dropped in an Israeli airstrike blew up as Gazan police engineers were working to neutralize it in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
Police said three police engineers were also killed. Four people, including AP photographer Hatem Moussa, were badly injured.
Moussa told a colleague that they were filming the scene when an initial explosion went off. He said he was hit by shrapnel and began to run away when there was a second explosion. The blast knocked him unconscious, and he woke up in a hospital. Moussa was later placed into surgery.
Camilli, an Italian citizen, had worked for The Associated Press since 2005, when he was hired in Rome. He relocated to Jerusalem in 2006, and often covered assignments in Gaza. In recent months, he had been based in Beirut, returning to Gaza after the war broke out last month.
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