(IsraelNN.com) Reuters News Agency has announced it is cutting from its payroll a freelance photographer who altered a photograph that showed that the results of an Israeli bombing were far worse than in reality.

An American news site caught the fake when it noticed that the billows of smoke in the photo showed a repetitious pattern. However, the news agency said that the photographer, Adnan Hajj, said the image was changed after he tried "to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under."

Hajj also photographed images of a dead child in the explosion in the village of Kana last week. Several private web sites have questioned the veracity of the pictures.