Journalist Veronique Robert has died after being wounded in an explosion while covering the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this week, her employer France Televisions has said.
The landmine blast on Monday had already killed her French colleague Stephan Villeneuve, 48, and Iraqi Kurdish reporter Bakhtiyar Addad, 41. Another freelance reporter also suffered minor wounds.
The journalists were covering Iraqi special forces’ operations as they close in on the last remaining areas held by the Islamic State of the Levant and Iraq (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Mosul.
READ MORE: Kurdish and French reporters killed in Mosul explosion
Robert, 54, underwent surgery in Iraq and was flown to France for treatment on Friday, but died of her wounds in the capital, Paris, on Saturday, the public broadcaster said in a statement.
France Televisions said Robert was an experienced war correspondent specialising in coverage of the Middle East, and particularly Iraq.
“The word sadness is not enough to describe how we feel,” Nicolas Jaillard, Robert’s producer, wrote on Facebook
Emilie Raffoul, a producer who worked with Robert for 15 years, told the AFP news agency: “She was someone who was very determined.
“She was used to combat zones, she was a professional war (correspondent) who had covered several conflicts, a specialist in the Middle East.”
Reporters without Borders (RSF), the Paris-based media rights watchdog, also saluted her.
Lamenting the death of foreign correspondents on the front lines of war, Christophe Deloire, the RSF secretary-general, said there were “too many headstones in the cemetery of great reporters”.
According to RSF’s own tally, Robert’s death brings to 29 the number of journalists killed in Iraq since 2014.
On Tuesday, the French president’s office announced that Villeneuve would be posthumously awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour, one of France’s highest honours.
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