Wounded Lebanese journalist recounts hours of agony when Israeli strike killed colleague

BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese journalist who was wounded in an Israeli airstrike that killed her colleague this week described hours of agony as they waited for help to arrive, in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday.

Zeinab Faraj, a young freelance photographer and video journalist, frequently moved on assignment with Amal Khalil, a longtime correspondent in southern Lebanon with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

The two were driving behind a relative of Faraj in the village of al-Tiri, about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the border with Israel on Wednesday. That was five days after a fragile truce was implemented between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, planning to cover the post-ceasefire situation in the area.

As they passed through the village, Khalil holding her phone out the window to film, an Israeli strike hit the car in front of them, Faraj said, speaking from the Beirut hospital where she is recovering.

The women pulled over and got out of the car, hunkering down on the side of the road as a drone remained in the sky overhead. About an hour later, a second strike hit Khalil’s car, next to them.

Faraj managed to pull open the metal shutter of a shop behind them and the women took refuge inside.

“Amal was crawling, she was wounded — her nose and head and shoulder and leg,” Faraj recalled, speaking with difficulty with her face swollen and bruised. Faraj said Khalil had also suffered burn wounds after the targeted car next to them caught fire.

The journalists were able to speak with their families and colleagues. Faraj said Khalil had put on a brave face and tried to assure her family that they were fine.

In the meantime, a flurry of contacts had begun between the Lebanese Red Cross, the Lebanese army, the U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, and the Israeli military to try to secure safe passage to evacuate the journalists.

After a while, Faraj began to drift off.

“When I said I wanted to go to sleep, Amal came closer and hugged me and told me, ‘Zeinab, don’t leave me alone,’” she said. “I realized that Amal was not in good condition. The color of her face had changed and I realized that she had some internal bleeding, too.”

She was half asleep when she heard the sound of a missile falling. A third strike hit the building where the two journalists were sheltering.

Faraj was thrown out of the shop by the impact while Khalil was trapped inside.

“I was in and out of consciousness, and then I thought my dad had come to get me and I began calling to him, ‘Baba, I’m here, come and help me,’” Faraj said.

A rescue team arrived and was able to pull Faraj out of the rubble and evacuate her as well as the bodies of the two people killed in the strike on the first car. Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement that the Israeli military opened fire on the Red Cross ambulance that arrived to rescue Khalil, forcing it to turn back.

Israel’s military said individuals in the village had violated the ceasefire, endangering its troops, and denied that it targets journalists or that it prevented rescue teams from reaching the area. It said the incident was under review.

Faraj had lost consciousness and said she was unaware that Khalil had not been rescued along with her until hours later.

Shortly before midnight, after the Lebanese army, civil defense and the Lebanese Red Cross received clearance and got to the scene, Khalil’s body was pulled from the rubble.

Faraj believes that “if they had gotten to her a bit sooner, Amal would be here today.”

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began on March 2, when the militant group fired a barrage of missiles over the border, two days after the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran. Israel responded with widespread bombardment in Lebanon and a ground invasion.

Since the ceasefire, Israeli forces have continued to occupy a border strip that extends around 10 km (6 miles) into Lebanese territory, describing the area as a necessary buffer zone to protect its northern towns from Hezbollah rockets. Both Israel and Hezbollah have continued to launch strikes despite the truce.

Faraj believes that the journalists were deliberately targeted. Khalil had said publicly that during her coverage in southern Lebanon in the previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024, she had received threatening messages from an Israeli number.

It was not clear whether the messages came from the Israeli military or from a private individual. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Days before Khalil's death, Avichay Adraee, an Israeli army spokesperson, in a post on X reposted a video from Al-Akhbar showing Khalil rescuing a cat from the rubble of a destroyed building. He called the newspaper “terrorist media speaking on behalf of Hezbollah, the devil” because it has a pro-Hezbollah editorial line.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, an international watchdog, in a statement called the post “incitement.”

“Under international humanitarian law, journalists, as civilians, are protected from direct and indiscriminate attack, regardless of the positions or affiliation of their media outlets, provided they do not directly participate in hostilities," the group said. “There is no evidence that Khalil or Faraj were directly participating in hostilities."

It called for an international investigation into Khalil’s killing.

According to Lebanon’s information ministry, nine journalists have been killed by Israeli strikes since March 2. In total, nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, including 277 women, 177 children and 100 health workers. Fifteen Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

Associated Press writer Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel, contributed to this report.

Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who works for the daily Al-Akhbar newspaper, reports near a destroyed bridge in Qasmiyeh, Lebanon, Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Mourners hold posters that show portraits of Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, who was killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike, during her funeral procession in the village of Baysariyeh in southern Lebanon on Thursday, April 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Photographer and video journalist Zeinab Faraj, who was wounded in an Israeli airstrike that killed her colleague this week, recovers in al-Zahraa hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Bassam Hatoum)

WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access at the southern border of the U.S., a key pillar of the Republican president’s plan to crack down on migration.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can’t circumvent that.

The court opinion stems from action taken by Trump on Inauguration Day 2025, when he declared that the situation at the southern border constituted an invasion of America and that he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over.

The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making,” allow him to suspend plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.

“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” wrote Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden.

“We conclude that the INA’s text, structure, and history make clear that in supplying power to suspend entry by Presidential proclamation, Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” the opinion said.

The administration can ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling or go to the Supreme Court.

The order doesn’t formally take effect until after the court considers any request to reconsider.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, said she had not seen the ruling but called it “unsurprising,” blaming politically-motivated judges.

“They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens,” she said.

Leavitt said Trump was taking actions that are “completely within his powers as commander in chief.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. “We are sure we will be vindicated,” she wrote in an emailed statement.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Advocates say the right to request asylum is enshrined in the country’s immigration law and say denying migrants that right puts people fleeing war or persecution in grave danger.

Lee Gelernt, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, said in a statement that the appellate ruling is “essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration’s unlawful and inhumane executive order.”

Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, welcomed the court decision as a victory for their clients.

“Today’s DC Circuit ruling affirms that capricious actions by the President cannot supplant the rule of law in the United States,” said Nicolas Palazzo, director of advocacy and legal Services at Las Americas.

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gives immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted, but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.

Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport migrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, also heard the case.

In the executive order, Trump argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act gives presidents the authority to suspend entry of any group that they find “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The executive order also suspended the ability of migrants to ask for asylum.

Trump’s order was another blow to asylum access in the U.S., which was severely curtailed under the Biden administration, although under Biden some pathways for protections for a limited number of asylum seekers at the southern border continued.

For Josue Martinez, a psychologist who works at a small migrant shelter in southern Mexico, the ruling marked a potential “light at the end of the tunnel” for many migrants who once hoped to seek asylum in the U.S. but ended up stuck in vulnerable conditions in Mexico.

“I hope there’s something more concrete, because we’ve heard this kind of news before: A district judge files an appeal, there’s a temporary hold, but it’s only temporary and then it’s over,” he said.

Meanwhile, migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and other countries have struggled to make ends meet as they try to seek refuge in Mexico’s asylum system that’s all but collapsed under the weight of new strains and slashed international funds.

This week hundreds of migrants, mostly stranded migrants from Haiti, left the southern Mexican city of Tapachula on foot to seek better living conditions elsewhere in Mexico.

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AP reporters Gary Fields in Washington, Gisela Salomon in Miami and Megan Janetsky in Mexico City contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to show that Leavitt was speaking to Fox News, not to a press gaggle.

President Donald Trump speaks during an event on health care affordability in the Oval Office at the White House, Thursday, April 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)