BEIRUT: A journalist working for Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency narrowly escaped death while returning from the south, the NNA said Monday.

It said Hala Madi survived a car crash Sunday afternoon as she drove from south Lebanon to Beirut.

“At the beginning I thought a bomb had gone off in my car,” Madi told The Daily Star by telephone, her voice still quivering a day after the attack.

Madi said she was driving her Toyota on the south Lebanon-Beirut highway when a black BMW with tinted glass rammed into her car several times, causing the car to smash into a wall and turn over.

“I’m not sure if it was an intentional car attack. He hit me and sped away. I guess he was just one of those reckless drivers,” she said.

Madi said she did not file a lawsuit because she did not know who the assailant was.

She said she suffered injury to her spinal cord and has been asked to rest in bed for a few weeks.