Reuters’ Issam Abdallah covered world’s biggest events with bravery, insight
BEIRUT — Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, 37, who was killed on Friday while filming Israeli missile attacks at the Israeli-Lebanon border, brought courage, compassion and insight to his work covering some of the biggest news stories of the past decade. Whether he was reporting on the war against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or gunbattles on the streets in his native Lebanon, Abdallah excelled at telling the stories of people living through catastrophe, his colleagues recalled after his death on Friday. “I have learned through all the years of covering conflicts and wars with Reuters from around the region that the picture is not only front lines and smoke, but the untold human stories which touch us all inside,” he wrote to editors last year after a tough assignment in Ukraine. Abdallah was nominated as Reuters Video Journalist of the year in 2020 for outstanding coverage of the Beirut port blast, providing the world with some of the first and strongest images of the disaster. He was part of a larger team that won the award in 2022 for their coverage in Ukraine. “He had a passion to tell the stories he saw unfold in front of his eyes. That passion was the same for a papal visit or covering an earthquake,” said Reuters Europe Video Editor Eleanor Biles. While reporting in some of the world’s most dangerous places, Abdallah had a reputation among his peers as careful and cautious in difficult environments. He worked hard to ensure his own safety and that of colleagues. During a gruelling weeks-long assignment in 2019, Abdallah was one of the first journalists to break news of the surrender of hundreds of Islamic State fighters holed up in their last stronghold in eastern Syria. “He reported courageously and responsibly,” said Ellen Francis, a Washington Post reporter, who formerly worked for Reuters and deployed with him there. As his home country Lebanon fell into economic ruin and unending political crisis, it was often Abdallah who cheered the mood in the Reuters Beirut bureau, forging close friendships with colleagues and their families. He loved to bring colleagues together, often ordering large breakfast spreads for the entire office, and frequently pulling out his camera for a group photo, according to journalists in the news agency’s Beirut bureau. Passion and professionalism Abdallah was buried on Saturday in his hometown of Khiyam
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