25 year-old Syrian Journalist Khaled Al-Khateb Killed in the Line of Duty by ISIS

21st Century Wire says…

Here’s a story that you will never see mentioned across the entirety of the western mainstream media.

Yesterday, a 25 year-old Syrian journalist, Khaled Al-Khateb, was killed by an ISIS rocket attack in Homs province. He had just recently joined RT Arabic as a stringer covering fighting in the Homs region.

Today RT Arabic lost a young colleague, journalist Khaled Alkhateb. This is very painful news for all of us,” the head of RT Arabic, Maya Manna, said in a statement.

“This morning, together with soldiers of the Syrian Army, he was heading to the town of al-Sukhnah, where heavy fighting is currently underway to free it. On their way there, not far from Homs, the convoy was attacked by IS militants,” she explained.

Interestingly, Al-Khateb’s production crew was hit by ISIS after exposing the fact that US-led ‘coalition’ warplanes have been murdering innocent civilians in Syria by the hundreds in recent weeks and months.

Khaled’s father, Gasan Alkhateb, told RT his son loved his work and was always ready to risk his life for the sake of telling the truth.

“I express gratitude to RT and his colleagues. This tragedy is our common tragedy. You were his second family. This is our destiny and we are proud of him. He was always a strong person. He never stopped of anything to convey the truth. Everybody, who knew him, knows this. Everybody knows what a person he was. He loved his homeland, his job and the Syrian people.”

Khaled lost his life in the fight for his homeland and against “those beasts from ISIS,” he added.

The following is a report from RT International…

In his last news story for RT Arabic, journalist Khaled Alkhateb talked to refugees from Raqqa who spoke about the death and destruction caused by coalition strikes. The 25-year-old was killed Sunday in a shelling offensive by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria.

The coalition bombed schools and civilians. That’s why our children do not go to schools now. Many civilians were hurt, as it [coalition] hit both schools and hospitals,” Abu Amdjad told Alkhateb, who worked with RT Arabic last week.

The man was among many other civilians who had been forced to flee Raqqa. In their home town, not a single government building was left unscathed from the coalition airstrikes, people told the reporter, saying that the US-led coalition bombed every building, claiming that IS terrorists were hiding there.

Alkhateb reported from the Syrian city of Hama.

A fourth grader told the journalist that the coalition forces bombed his school and “deprived us of the opportunity to study.”

“There were refugees from Aleppo and other areas inside the school during the raids. Many of them died as a result of these airstrikes,” the boy said.

People from small villages in the Raqqa region also shared their suffering with Alkhateb, claiming the coalition strikes had destroyed their homes, water supplies and “burnt down hundreds of hectares of land.” Locals lost all their crops, they lamented.

‘Dogs eating bodies’: Witnesses recall the horrors of US-led liberation of Raqqa https://t.co/lsV1epZAHj

— RT (@RT_com) July 21, 2017

Another Raqqa resident said the coalition used white phosphorus in several districts. In June, Amnesty International warned the US-led coalition against the use of white phosphorus near civilians which is against international law.

“It is obvious that all the sides who are responsible for deploying aviation, including the international coalition, all those who give orders, should very well think of the consequences of their actions. For the civilians not to be killed or forced to flee, and all the civilian infrastructure not to be destroyed,” Alkhateb said in his last report for RT Arabic.

On Sunday, the journalist was killed in a rocket attack by IS militants in Homs province. He died while filming a report on the Syrian Army’s operations against IS terrorists. His cameraman, Muutaz Yaqoub, was injured in the shelling. Several Syrian soldiers were also killed and injured in the attack.

The same day, at least six civilians were reportedly killed and 10 others injured in the US-led international coalition bombing of the city of Abu Kamal in the Syrian governorate of Deir ez-Zor, Syria’s SANA news agency reported. Women and children are reportedly among the dead, SANA said citing local sources, also claiming that the airstrikes caused serious damage to civilian infrastructure.

‘Illegitimate coalition’ must pay for destroying Syria – Damascus to UN https://t.co/5nPmGoTwSG

— RT (@RT_com) July 22, 2017

Last week, while demanding that the American-led coalition strikes stop, Damascus told the UN that it wants the US and its allies to pay for the destruction of Syrian infrastructure and to bear legal responsibility for “illegitimately” bombing civilian targets.

The ongoing US-led anti-terrorist airstrikes “continue to claim the lives of hundreds of innocent Syrian civilians,” the Permanent Mission of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations said in letters addressed to the UN Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council.

READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files

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21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.