An armoured Land Rover hit by an Israeli rocket in Gaza will go on show for the first time in Manchester as a key artefact of a major exhibition about war correspondents.

Reporting Under Fire Since 1914,opening on May 28 at the Imperial War Museum North, is the first exhibition of its kind to take place in the UK and focuses on 12 of Britain's most famous news reporters since WW1. Exhibits include bullets which injured the BBC's Kate Adie, and one lodged in the mobile phone of cameraman Vaughan Smith while he filmed the Kosovo war.

But a special standalone exhibit about the dangers of war reporting will feature the Reuters Land Rover which bears the hole left by Israeli munitions after two journalists drove it into a conflict area of Gaza in 2006. The vehicle, which Reuters sold to the museum last year, has never been displayed.

"We are hoping to illuminate it from the inside to show the impact points of where the rocket came through the roof of the vehicle, so it's very much a key star object and your eyes will be drawn to it," explained the exhibition's curator Josephine Garnier.

"To actually see it in real life is shocking," she added. Ms Garnier explained that the museum had been mindful of political sensitivities in featuring many of the objects and had written the Land Rover's display information in close co-operation with Reuters.

Also on show are a notebook from BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen featuring reporting notes from Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, while the first photographs and report of the horrors of Bergen-Belsen by Richard Dimbleby will also be displayed.