Pierre Zakrzewski, a longtime Fox News photojournalist, was killed while reporting in Ukraine when a vehicle he was traveling in with correspondent, Benjamin Hall came under fire, the network said on Tuesday.
The 55-year-old war zone photographer died in Horenka, a village outside of the capital city of Kyiv, while reporting with Hall, Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement.
“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we share the news this morning regarding our beloved cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski,” Fox News Media chief executive, Suzanne Scott wrote to employees Tuesday morning. “Pierre was killed in Horenka, outside of Kyiv, Ukraine.”
Hall remains hospitalized in Ukraine, Scott said. The pair were traveling by car when their vehicle “was struck by incoming fire.”
Zakrzewski was a veteran war photojournalist who had “covered nearly every international story for Fox News from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria,” Scott said.
Scott said that Zakrzewski, who was based in London with his family, had been reporting from Ukraine since February.
Fox CEO added;
His talents were vast, and there wasn’t a role that he didn’t jump in to help with in the field — from photographer to engineer to editor to producer — and he did it all under immense pressure with tremendous skill. He was profoundly committed to telling the story, and his bravery, professionalism and work ethic were renowned among journalists at every media outlet. He was wildly popular — everyone in the media industry who has covered a foreign story knew and respected Pierre.
According to Fox News, the “beloved” Zakrzewski “played a key role in getting our Afghan freelance associates and their families out of the country after the U.S. withdrawal” last year.
On Monday, anchor John Roberts announced that Hall, an on-air correspondent who holds dual citizenship with the U.S. and U.K., had been wounded in an attack while reporting in Ukraine.
Hall, according to Irina Venediktova, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, has a “fragmentary fracture of the two lower extremities.” The reporter is reportedly being treated in intensive care.
On Sunday, award-winning American filmmaker and journalist Brent Renaud was also killed in Ukraine, in an attack in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
Renaud was working on a video project for Time magazine with Juan Arredondo, another U.S. journalist, when the vehicle the two were traveling in came under attack from Russian forces. Arredondo survived, but 50-year-old Renaud was killed in the onslaught.
The journalist was described by Ann Marie Lipinski, the director of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, as being “gifted and kind, and his work was infused with humanity.”
Press freedom groups have denounced the violence journalists are facing while covering the war. The Committee to Protect Journalists, after the death of Renaud, called on Russian forces to “stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once.”
According to the United Nations, 691 civilians have been killed and more than 1,000 others have been injured since Russia invaded Ukraine three weeks ago.
The U.N.’s human rights office, however, said the civilian death toll is believed to be “considerably higher.” It also reported that the war also has forced more than 3 million refugees to flee the country.
