LONDON – Britain's Prince Harry (search) 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 (search), 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."
The younger son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana (search), 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 tried to lead normal lives, a task made "very difficult" by the media spotlight they live under.
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