MARAWI • An Australian television journalist was shot in the neck yesterday as he reported from a southern Philippine city where militants are battling government troops, but he did not suffer major injuries.

Mr Adam Harvey, a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, wrote on Twitter: "Lucky", alongside an image of an X-ray showing the bullet lodged in his neck, close to his spine.

"Thanks everyone - I'm okay. Bullet is still in my neck, but it missed everything important," he said in another Twitter post.

Mr Harvey was shot in Marawi, a Muslim-majority city in the mainly Catholic Philippines where government forces are struggling to defeat hundreds of militants fighting under the black flags of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria group.

He was inside the provincial capitol compound, where local and foreign journalists have congregated during the more than three weeks of fighting, the government's crisis management committee spokes- man Zia Alonto Adiong told Agence France-Presse.

Although the compound is secured by the military, it is only about 2km from the pockets of the city that the gunmen control.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE