A team of BBC journalists has been attacked in the south Russian city of Astrakhan.
The BBC, in its own account of the incident, said that the journalists had gone there to investigate reports of Russian servicemen being killed near the border with Ukraine, when the incident occurred.
As the journalists left a cafe and approached their car, they were ambushed and attacked by at least three aggressive persons.
The news organisation said that the gang members used physical violence as they grabbed the camera and smashed it on the road before escaping with it in a moving car. A BBC cameraman was knocked to the ground and beaten as the scuffle lead to chaotic scene in the Russian city.
"The team is now safe and back in Moscow," BBC said in a news statement.
"Following the attack, we spent more than four hours being questioned in a local police station. We discovered later that while we were there, back in the car some of our recording equipment had been tampered with," the broadcaster said, adding that the hard drive of the main computer as well as several memory cards with video material had been stolen by the mob.
