Terrorists in Syria target journalists to mask truth: IRIB crew

A member of Iranian TV news crew covering the conflict in Syria says militants operating in the Arab country are deliberately targeting journalists in order to conceal what really happens on the ground.

Ghassan al-Khashan said on Tuesday that there is a deliberate attempt to prevent the release of news and reports of militant setbacks in Syria.

The comments came just one day after Mohammad Hassan Hosseini, a field correspondent of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), was critically injured in a suspected mortar attack by militants in Syria’s western city of Latakia.

Khashan, a Syrian cameraman who was accompanying Hosseini when he was targeted in the attack, said the world is still unfamiliar with the truth of the conflict in Syria.

He said terrorists target the journalists to help those “biased media” continue with the narrative that most of the Syrian territory is under the control of militants.

“They don’t want the truth to be uncovered for the world,” Khashan said.

Sources in Latakia’s Darraj hospital, where Hosseini is being treated, said they will do their best to save him. They said Hosseini is being kept in the intensive care unit and currently breathes through a ventilator.

A number of correspondents affiliated to Iranian news stations have in the past fallen victim to the conflict in Syria, among them Press TV correspondent Maya Naser, who was killed in September 2012 after militants attacked Press TV staff in the capital, Damascus.