NEWS PHOTOGRAPHER INJURED IN PALESTINE

By: Dorothy Ho Photojournalist Was On Assignment For Newsweek


(Photo District News) A
photographer for Gamma, the French photography agency, was shot and wounded
recently. Laurent Van Der Stockt, 36, was covering a demonstration when a bullet
(apparently from the Israeli side) hit him.

The bullet hit Van Der Stockt's left foot and ripped through his femoral artery,
says JP Laffont, Gamma's general manager in the U.S. "He's OK," said Laffont,
"but nobody knows how damaged his nerve is." To stop the hemorrhaging, doctors
performed two operations on Van Der Stockt, first in a Palestinian hospital,
then in an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem. He has since been evacuated to a Paris
hospital.

Van Der Stockt, a Gamma photographer for 10 years, was on assignment for
Newsweek and had been covering the conflict for about two months. His
wife and 5-year-old twin boys are with him in Israel. This is his second injury.
In 1991, he was wounded in the arm in Vukovar, Croatia.

The Associated Press' Lefteris Pitarakis remembers splitting up with Van Der
Stockt only two hours before the shooting. They both covered the same
demonstration in Ramallah, only at different sections.

Pitarakis and Magnum's Thomas Dworzak were among the photojournalists who rushed
to the hospital when news spread that a photographer had been shot. They
recovered Van Der Stockt's roll of film, developed it, and edited and scanned
the pictures for Gamma, as it was a Friday and the news magazines were on
deadline.

Pitarakis recalls seeing a conscious Van Der Stockt in hospital: "He was talking
but he was in pain. He lost a lot of blood and he was pale." According to
Pitarakis, the bullet cracked Van Der Stockt's leg bone on entry and exited
behind the knee.

Days before, on Feb. 6, Norwegian photographer Harald Henden was hit in the back
of his head with a rubber bullet in Ramallah. Henden, who was on assignment for
the Verdens Gang newspaper, received stitches and was discharged,
according to Norwegian news reports.

And just three months earlier, freelance photojournalist Yola Monakhov was
injured in Bethlehem. The 26-year-old was on her first day of an assignment for
the Associated Press when she was shot in the lower abdomen. The Israeli army
later apologized for that incident.



Photo District News is a sister publication to E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.