Video: Georgian TV reporter shot by Russian sniper during live broadcast carries on with her report with bleeding arm



This is the dramatic moment a TV reporter was shot by a sniper as she reported live from war-torn Georgia.

Tamara Urushadze took a bullet to her left arm in the flashpoint town of Gori as Russian forces continued their illegal occupation.

Bravely, or foolishly, the 32-year-old brunette continued her report after a few moments as other journalists and aid workers dashed for cover.









Siege-town Gori has become a deadly 'sniper's alley' with citizens at the mercy of rampaging militiamen - believed to be from the breakaway republic South Ossetia - looting and firing guns, some drunkenly.

On Sunday video footage caught reporters from two Turkish stations ducking and saying their last prayers as they were fired upon by Russian snipers.

One of the journalists was hit in the eye but his injuries are reportedly not thought to be life-threatening.

'Friends, I got hit on the head,' the journalist, Levent Ozturk shouts in the video. 'I am OK now, but in a few minutes ... .'





The four journalists begin reciting a Muslim last prayer. Then they wave through the shattered sunroof of their truck and shout 'Press! Press!' in English.

All the journalists, from Turkish networks NTV and Kanal Turk, were safely back in Turkey by yesterday.



The Kremlin stands accused of turning a blind eye to renegades bent on 'ethnic cleansing' in revenge for Georgia's ill-conceived invasion of South Ossetia last Friday.

But in turn Moscow blames the Georgians for abandoning their own people.



Miss Urushadze, who reports for Georgia's equivalent of the BBC, was talking live to a TV camera about humanitarian aid arriving in Gori yesterday afternoon when the sniper struck.

In the footage, she gasps as the first bullet grazes her left arm, and instinctively jumps sideways as four more whizz past.

In shock, she slumps to the ground as the cameraman rushes to her side.

A still of Tamara Urushadze reporting live on Georgian TV shortly before she was shot by a sniper in Gori

A studio presenter's voice is heard saying: 'You can see that something has happened during live coverage. Unfortunately we don't know what.'

Then Miss Urushadze is on air again, sitting in a van a few yards away and showing the camera her grazed arm.

She tells viewers: 'I have been hit by a bullet. You can see I am scratched here. Most likely it was a sniper.

'It has most likely been a light weapon as it's a minor wound. There is no one to be seen here and I have no idea who shot me.'

She was later taken to hospital.

Meanwhile, Russia taunted the United States by blowing up its ally's military bases and boasting Georgia will never get back the rebel enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Kremlin's troops sabotaged airfields and depots in Georgia to cripple the battered state's U.S.-trained military.

The Turkish journalists are attacked. Bulletholes can clearly be seen in the windowscreens before they are detained by the Russian army

And the former Red Army humiliated their beaten foes by one minute withdrawing from Georgian territory and then re-entering it, just to prove that they still could.

At least five explosions rocked Gori as Russian troops went about disabling Georgia's ability to fight a future conflict.

Again it was the innocents who suffered most as the few remaining citizens in the abandoned city were targeted.

A steady, dejected trickle of Georgian refugees fled the front line in overloaded cars, trucks and tractor-pulled wagons, heading to the capital Tbilisi.

One Soviet-era car carried eight people, including a mother and a baby in the front seat. The open back door of a small blue van revealed at least a dozen people crowded inside.

There was also a tense stand-off between frustrated Georgian special forces, desperate to hit back, and battle-hardened Russian troops from Chechnya at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city.

Around midday, Russian tanks sped towards the checkpoint and Georgian police quickly retreated behind their own forces.

Outside the town, hundreds of Georgian tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers massed on the main east-west highway.

Soldiers dozed in the sunshine by their vehicles awaiting the order to advance.

But in a throwback to darker Cold War times, Moscow seems intent on taking its time to withdraw its vastly superior forces, in a deliberate snub to President Bush's decision to raise the stakes by ordering U.S. forces to the region.

He sent American military aircraft loaded with humanitarian aid.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued another urgent call on Russia to honour the ceasefire as she headed to Tbilisi to have a final version of the truce agreement signed by the Georgian president.

But even as she spoke, Russian troops were making themselves at home in the country, including the Black Sea port city of Poti which hosts an oil terminal key to supplying fuel to Western Europe.

The Russian troops in Gori told us they would stay put 'until Mr Putin says so', adding they were in no hurry and mockingly praising the 'beautiful scenery' around them.

Moscow made it clear that the Black Sea state can wave goodbye to ever seeing its two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, becoming part of Georgia.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov rammed home the point by declaring that the world 'can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity'.

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to act as 'protector' to the two pro-Russian regions and met their leaders in the Kremlin, telling them: 'You have defended your territory. The truth was on your side. That is why you have been victorious.

'The people of South Ossetia suffered genocide and it will take years, maybe decades, for these wounds to be healed.'

The incendiary talk a week after the war began dashed both Georgian and Western hopes that the region could return to the status quo before the bloodshed which has left hundreds dead and thousands of refugees on both sides.