Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall hospitalised after being injured in Kyiv

Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall has been hospitalised after being injured while reporting on the ground near Kyiv, the network has revealed.

Anchor John Roberts announced live on air on Monday afternoon that the network’s State Department correspondent Mr Hall is currently in hospital in Ukraine.

Few details are known about what happened, he said. The extent of Mr Hall’s injuries and his condition are also currently unclear.

This comes just one day after an American journalist was shot and killed by Russian forces in Irpin while on an assignment for TIME magazine.

Brent Renaud was in a car on route to report on Ukrainian refugees trying to evacuate when the vehicle was ambushed by Vladimir Putin’s troops, according to Ukrainian officials. A second American journalist was also wounded and taken to hospital.

Mr Roberts said that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott sent a memo to staff on Monday confirming that Mr Hall had been injured in Ukraine.

“Earlier today, our correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured while news gathering outside of Kyiv in Ukraine,” read the statement.

“We have a minimal level of details right now. Ben is hospitalised and our teams on the ground are working to gather additional information as the situation quickly unfolds.

“The safety of our entire team of journalists in Ukraine and the surrounding regions is our top priority and of the utmost importance.

open image in gallery

“This is a stark reminder for all journalists who are putting their lives on the line every day to deliver the news from the war zone.

“We will update everyone as we know more. Please keep Ben and his family in your prayers.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Joe Biden was thinking of the wounded journalist when asked about the situation and the president’s previous pledge to “respond forcefully” if any Americans were harmed in Ukraine.

“Well, let me first say, your colleague, Benjamin Hall, I know there’s not final reports yet or we would wait for your news organization to confirm those but our thoughts, the president’s thoughts, our administration’s thoughts are with him, his family and all of you at Fox News as well,” she said in Monday’s press briefing.

Mr Hall is a British-American journalist working for US network Fox News who has been covering the invasion of Ukraine on the ground in the war-torn country. He has previously written for The Independent.

News of his injuries come just days after he clashed with Fox News colleague Greg Gutfeld over comments he had made about the situation in Ukraine.

open image in gallery

Mr Gutfield had claimed on his show “The Five” last Tuesday that the media was exaggerating the extent of the atrocities on the ground to create “some sort of emotional response” which then “creates a profit for news companies”.

Mr Hall pushed back at his coworker’s claims.

“Speaking as someone on the ground, I want to say that this is not the media trying to drum up some emotional response,” he said.

He described cities being “absolutely flattened” by Russian forces and Ukrainians desperately trying to evacuate all the while being shelled.

“It’s an absolute catastrophe and the people who are caught in the middle are the ones who are really suffering,” said Mr Hall.

Mr Gutfield, who made his comments from the safety of the US, fired back that Mr Hall was taking a “cheap attack on me”.

Last week, the anchor also revealed how his Fox News colleagues on the ground in Ukraine were helping his mother-in-law evacuate the country.

He told how she was finally reunited with his wife Elena after crossing the border from Ukraine into Poland.

While it is currently unclear how Mr Hall was injured, Monday’s incident comes after Mr Putin’s forces have repeatedly targeted journalists covering the war in Ukraine while also censoring coverage back in Russia as he tries to control the narrative around the unprovoked attack.

Back on 1 March, Ukrainian journalist and cameraman Yevhenii Sakun was one of five people killed when Russian forces shelled a TV tower in Kyiv.

Days later, two journalists for Sky News were shot by Russian forces but survived.

Then, on Sunday, award-winning American journalist Mr Renaud became the first foreign journalist killed in the war when he was shot dead in Irpin.

Kyiv’s chief of police Andriy Nebitov said in a social media post that Russian troops opened fire on a car Mr Renaud was inside close to a checkpoint.

Mr Nebitov shared photos of the 50-year-old’s body, his American passport and a New York Times press badge.

The New York Times released a statement saying that the press badge was from an old assignment and that Mr Renuad was not working for the paper at the time.

open image in gallery

TIME confirmed later that the filmmaker had been “in the region working on a TIME Studios project focused on the global refugee crisis”.

A second American journalist Juan Arredondo was also shot in the attack.

In a video filmed as he was being treated in a nearby hospital, he recalled how a group of foreign journalists were traveling through a checkpoint in Irpin on their way to film Ukrainian refugees fleeing the city.

He said they made their way across one of the first bridges in Irpin and got into a car headed to a second bridge, when they came under fire.

“Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” he said in the video shared online.

“So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting.

“There was two of us, my friend Brent Renaud, and he’s been shot and left behind… I saw he was shot in the neck.”

A third journalist also traveling in the same car was also wounded, according to Ukrainian officials.

Hours after the attack on the journalists, Irpin Mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said journalists would be denied entry to the city in order “to save the lives of both them and our defenders”.

Anthony Bellanger, general secretary for the International Federation of Journalists, said the deaths of journalists reporting on the war “cannot go unpunished.”

“The authorities must do everything possible to identify the perpetrators of these war crimes,” he said in a statement.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.