Syrian rebels tried to get me killed to show up the regime: Channel 4 news reporter says he was 'deliberately set up to be shot'


A senior British journalist claims that Syrian rebels tried to lead him and his colleagues into a trap so they would be killed by government forces, to discredit the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Channel 4 News chief correspondent Alex Thomson said a group from the Free Syrian Army led his team into the line of fire because ‘dead journos are bad for Damascus’.

He said his vehicle was shot at before the team managed to ‘floor it back to the road we’d been led in on’.

He wrote: ‘Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind. We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s land.

'At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead-end. There was no option but to drive back out on to the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.

‘Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we re-appeared.

‘I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.’

His comments on the Channel 4 website came as clashes were reported near the centre of the Syrian capital, while UN monitors finally


Alex Thompson, Channel 4 News's chief correspondent, said he was driven out into the centre of no-man's land was a deliberate move by rebels to get them killed


Taken from th edaily mail