Anchorage Daily News

A young Alaska war correspondent shot by Georgian separatists on Sunday was transported Thursday to a hospital in Moscow, his family said.

Winston Featherly-Bean, 22, is in the intensive care unit and has received a blood transfusion, said his mother, Christine Bean. He was flown from a hospital in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia around 5 a.m. Alaska time, according to his brother, Peter Featherly-Bean.

Winston was reportedly among the most seriously ill of those injured in the fight that left him wounded.

"We've learned that Winston was suddenly operated on again today," Peter wrote in an e-mail to family and friends early Thursday. "He is reportedly weak. We fear infection but hold on to better thoughts."

Winston told his mother in a phone call Tuesday that he had no feeling in his lower leg. He apparently has a shattered ankle and foot, she said. He speaks several languages, including at least one of the languages spoken in Georgia, but he does not speak Russian so he can't understand his caregivers, she said.

Winston was interviewed early this morning in Moscow at General Hospital No. 86 by a Fox News journalist, who told the family that he was alert but in pain, Peter Featherly-Bean said. The interview was supposed to air on Fox News.

Bean is making travel arrangements to join her son as soon as possible. The family hopes he will soon be well enough to be transferred to a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where he can have reconstructive surgery on his foot.

There was little word on Temuri Kiguradze, a Georgian journalist who worked with Winston at The Messenger, a small English-language newspaper in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Kiguradze was shot in the arm in the incident in which Winston was wounded.

"The last we heard he was at a police headquarters, still in Vladikavkaz," Peter Featherly-Bean said.

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.