A French photojournalist covering evacuation efforts in Eastern Ukraine was killed during a Russian strike, French President Emmanuel Macron said.
Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, who was carrying press credentials, was fatally wounded in the neck by shrapnel that pierced the armored evacuation truck he was in, Serhiy Haidai, governor of the Luhansk region, posted on Telegram on Monday, calling off evacuations after the attack. The truck was about to pick up 10 civilians, he said.
Haidai shared graphic images of the disturbing scene, showing the bloodied truck, which was marked “HUMANITARIAN AID” inches from where the projectile appeared to puncture the thick glass.
Macron, confirming the death of Leclerc-Imhoff on Monday, tweeted his condolences to his family and support for war correspondents. Before this attack, seven journalists had died while covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
BFMTV, the French news channel that Leclerc-Imhoff was reporting for, said in a statement that another colleague traveling with him, Maxime Brandstaetter, was “slightly injured.”
Leclerc-Imhoff, 32, had worked for the channel for six years. It was his second mission to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, BFMTV said.
Oleg Nikolenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign affairs ministry, condemned the killing near Severodonetsk, saying it was the latest on an expanding “list of Russian crimes against media workers in Ukraine.”
The strike came the same day the French foreign minister Catherine Colonna visited Ukraine. She called the journalist’s death “deeply shocking,” and she said she has demanded an investigation into the strike on a humanitarian convoy and reporter.
