Journalist who took on war zones all around the world

As well as hosting ITV's 'News at Ten', reporter Sandy Gall forged a career covering the world's most dangerous places

- ANTHONY HAYWARD

The craggy looks of Sandy Gall, who has died aged 97, were familiar to television viewers as both a foreign correspondent in the world’s war zones and a newscaster - one of the “faces” of ITV’s News at Ten - who brought calm authority to the stories he presented. His twice-broken nose was the result of a minicab crash, but it gave the 6ft 1in, lean journalist an appearance of having taken part in some of the battles he reported.

Gall joined ITN, the commercial channel’s news provider, in 1963 after 10 years at the news agency Reuters, where he had covered events during a turbulent period in history, from the Mau Mau rebellion and the Suez crisis to post-revolution Hungary and the Congo wars. For television, he reported from Vietnam in 1965, when the United States sent in the Marines. He returned to the country several times - covering the Tet Offensive in 1968 - and courageously decided to stay on in Saigon in 1975 to witness the North Vietnamese Army’s liberation and the aftermath.

Three years earlier, Gall had been imprisoned in Uganda after being sent to cover the dictator Idi Amin’s expulsion from the country of all Asians holding British passports. He was thrown into hut C19, the execution cell at the military police barracks in Makindye. There were bullet holes in the walls, with blood splattered on the ceiling, and Gall thought he heard the sound of a man being beaten to death with a shovel.

“I felt sick with fear and suddenly cold,” he recalled. “I began to pray.” Fortunately, after a short time, he was moved to the “VIP cell” and, three days later, deported.

Gall had a longer association with Afghanistan, which began with his reporting from the rebel mujahideen side three years after the Soviet invasion for his ITV documentary