Sky News cameraman killed in Egypt clashes

Mick Deane AP FILE PHOTO

LONDON —A veteran TV cameraman for Britain’s Sky News was shot and killed while covering the deadly violence in Cairo on Wednesday, the channel said.

Mick Deane, a 61-year-old father of two, had worked at Sky for 15 years. He had been based in Washington and, for the past two years, in Jerusalem.

The head of Sky News, John Ryley, paid tribute to a “talented and experienced” journalist while Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “saddened” by the news.

Deane was shot and wounded while reporting on the crisis in Cairo in a team with the channel’s Middle East correspondent Sam Kiley.

Deane received medical treatment, but died shortly afterwards.

None of the other members of the team were injured, Sky said.

The channel’s foreign editor Tim Marshall, who was clearly emotional as he described Deane on air, said: “He was a friend. Our hearts go out to his family.

“He died doing what he’d been doing so brilliantly for decades.”

Sky’s political editor Adam Boulton described him as “the nicest, the best, the bravest.”

Ryley said: “Everyone at Sky News is shocked and saddened by Mick’s death.

“He was a talented and experienced journalist who had worked with Sky News for many years.”

At least 124 people were killed in the Rabaa al-Adawiya camp alone on Wednesday, according to an AFP count, after security forces stormed two huge Cairo protest camps occupied for weeks by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

The Sky News cameraman was the second journalist to be killed in Egypt on Wednesday.

Habiba Ahmad Abdel Aziz, a 26-year-old reporter for the Xpress supplement of the Dubai-based Gulf News, died as troops clashed with pro-Morsi protesters.

She was visiting Egypt, her home country, on holiday and was not working at the time.

Reporters Without Borders told AFP that four other journalists, all Egyptians, were injured in Wednesday’s clashes.

Three were photographers and cameramen while one was a reporter.