Prince Harry Scuffles With Photog

Palace Says It Was Self-Defense; Lensman Says Royal Started It

(CBS/AP)  Britain's Prince Harry was hit in the face with a camera during a scuffle with a photographer outside a London nightclub early Thursday, a royal official said.

Clarence House, the office of Harry's father Prince Charles, said the prince then cut a photographer's lip when he pushed the camera away outside the Pangaea club at about 3 a.m.

"Prince Harry was hit in the face by a camera as photographers crowded around him as he was getting into a car," a spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity.

"In pushing the camera away, it's understood that a photographer's lip was cut."

While the Palace says Harry acted in self defense, CBS News Correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports several photos show the prince lunging at cameramen.

"Prince Harry was about to get in the car, then he reacted to one of the photographers and tried to grab his camera lens," said photographer Charlie Pycroft. "There was a bit of skerfuffle then one of his bodyguards pulled him back into the car."

The photographer involved, Chris Uncle, says Prince Harry "deliberately lashed out."

The younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, 20-year-old Harry is third in line to the throne.

He is often depicted in the press as wilder than his brother, 22-year-old Prince William.

Harry, who left school in the summer of 2003 and plans to enter Sandhurst military college next year, has often been photographed in nightclubs, although he spent part of the past year working with AIDS orphans in the southern African country of Lesotho.

In 2002, his father sent him to a London drug rehabilitation clinic for a day after he was caught smoking marijuana.

Last week a tribunal rejected claims by a former teacher at Eton college that she had helped the prince cheat on an important art exam.

In an interview broadcast in September, the prince said he and William try to lead normal lives, a task made "very difficult" by the media spotlight.

Former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter said the latest incident was inevitable.

"Every time Harry goes out he is stalked, he is ambushed and there is a little bit of intimidation in order for the paparazzi to get the right photograph and it was one of those things that was waiting to happen," he told the BBC.

Arbiter said he could not remember any other physical confrontations between the royals and the paparazzi, but he thought Harry might have been justified.

"Most people will agree that even a royal, and a 20-year-old one at that, is entitled to a little bit of privacy," he said.