Rio Olympics media bus attacked on highway

PanARMENIAN.Net - A bus carrying journalists at the Rio Games had its windows shattered in an apparent attack on a highway between Olympic venues on Tuesday, August 9 witnesses said. No one was seriously injured in the incident and it was unclear whether the vehicle had been hit by shots or stones, The Guardian reports.

The bus was making its way from the Games basketball venue to the main Olympic park at Barra da Tijuca when, according to passengers, two shots were heard hitting the vehicle. Windows shattered and flying glass left two people with minor lacerations.

Mario Andrade, the Rio 2016 spokesman, said three journalists suffered minor injuries when the windows of their bus were shattered, but the cause remains unknown.

“We don’t know yet if it was stones or bullets. The police are investigating,” he said. Foreign reporters on the bus, which was travelling from Deodoro to the Olympic Park, are reporting two gunshots.

Sheryl “Lee” Michaelson, a retired US air force captain who is working for a basketball publication told Reuters she could heard the report of the gun. “We were shot at. I mean we could hear the report of the gun,” said Michaelson.

Images of one panel of glass also seemed to show a bullet hole.

“There was kind of a popping noise and something hit two windows on the side of the bus and left two hole marks, which looked like bullet holes,” David Davies, a photographer for the British-based news agency Press Association, told the AP. He said occupants hit the floor, unsure what was happening. Davies said the bus eventually picked up a police escort.

However, a journalist for the domestic news agency Globo who was on board said rocks were to blame. Police have not yet given their version of what happened. But currently, nothing can be ruled out, particularly as this incident follows the discovery of a stray bullet at a tent in the equestrian centre on Saturday. Officials subsequently speculated that the shell came from drug traffickers who had fired at a surveillance balloon.