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Veteran journalist and author Robert Fisk died at the age of 74.
Mr. Fisk suffered what is believed to be a stroke at his home in Dublin.
It was reported that he felt ill on Friday and was admitted to the Hospital de San Vicente, where he died shortly thereafter.
Since 1972, Fisk worked as a Northern Ireland correspondent for the London Times during the riots.
He later became one of the most respected and controversial British foreign correspondents, reporting on the first Gulf War, and was one of the only Western journalists to interview Osama Bin Laden.
President Michael D Higgins paid tribute to the late journalist, saying that people “all over the world trusted him to have a critical and informed view of what was happening in conflict zones around the world.”
“I have had the privilege of meeting Robert Fisk since the 1990s, and meeting him in some of the countries he wrote about with such insight. I met him in Iraq, and last year I had my last meeting with him in Beirut., During my official visit to Lebanon.
“He knew that his acquisition of Irish citizenship meant a lot to him, and his influence on young professionals in journalism and political writing was attested to by the general public who attended his speaking times in Ireland.”
Veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn has paid tribute to his old friend by describing Mr. Fisk as his best friend and a wonderful person who had been exactly the type of person the world needed.
Fisk’s efforts to uncover the truth and report on what mattered had made him very special, Cockburn told Morning Ireland on RTÉ radio.
In a world of Trump and Johnson, it was important to have people like Robert Fisk, he said.
The two men first met in Belfast in the early 1970s, when Fisk was a reporter for the London Times and Cockburn was completing his PhD at Queen’s University. The two spoke at least once a week and were in “constant contact.”
Cockburn said Robert Fisk was a wonderful journalist who sought justice and held governments to account for his “extraordinarily good reports.” Fisk had been the first to report on the Israeli bombing of Lebanon at a time when no one else was reporting on it. Mr. Cockburn said.
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