As pro- and anti-government protesters clashed violently in Cairo Wednesday, some U.S. journalists found themselves the target of the unruly crowds.
CBS News reporters in Cairo said that it’s not safe for journalists to be out in the crowds, and CBS News anchor Katie Couric reports via Twitter that protesters supporting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are “very hostile” and wouldn’t let crews shoot video.
(See Couric attempt to report from the street in the video below.)
CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Lara Logan reported from a hotel in Alexandria that the military prevented CBS News from filming, and marched the camera crew back to its hotel at gunpoint.
“When our crew went out to film beauty shots early this morning with no idea the situation was now different, they were confronted by soldiers and plainclothes agents … intimidated and bullied and in fact marched at gunpoint through the streets all the way back to our hotel,” Logan said. “It was a very frightening experience, one that was repeated throughout the day for us.”
Logan said that the crew is basically “trapped in our hotel room.”
“We can go out without cameras, but even then we are being watched everywhere that we go and we are being confronted,” she said. “We are definitely being prevented from telling the story. People are increasingly afraid to talk to us.”
CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann provided a first-hand account about being attacked near a checkpoint close to Liberation Square with a photographer who was sprayed with mace:
“[The photographer] was ahead of me when we were suddenly attacked. His small camera was in his pocket, but we stood out as Americans. People began pushing and shoving both of us, especially him. We’ve been in these situations enough to know you just try to get out as quickly as you can. But we were trapped. From behind, I saw him get pushed and shoved, and then three separate people ran up to throw punches at him as he ducked to get out of the melee. He later told me he had also been maced.
“Suddenly both of us were being pushed and carried along by a wave of people, but these were the good guys. They were trying to get us out of harm’s way. They formed a human shield around each of us, but kept us moving, away from the point where the guys throwing punches had suddenly pounced.”
Strassmann and the photographer are both fine and back at a hotel.