Israel’s navy focused and killed 5 Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza on Sunday, together with Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif.
Israel took duty for the strike, claiming al-Sharif was the top of a Hamas terrorist cell. The IDF mentioned it had intelligence and paperwork from Gaza to show it, and shared undated photographs of Al-Sharif with Yahya Sinwar, the highest Hamas chief in Gaza, who was killed final October. CBS Information couldn’t confirm the authenticity of the photographs.
Al Jazeera and al-Sharif had beforehand dismissed Israel’s claims as baseless, The Related Press reported. Simply three weeks in the past, al-Sharif had appealed to the Committee to Shield Journalists over fears he is likely to be assassinated.
Al-Sharif started reporting for Al Jazeera just a few days after the conflict started in 2023. He was recognized for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for protecting the starvation gripping a lot of the territory’s inhabitants.
In a July broadcast, al-Sharif cried on air as a girl behind him collapsed, apparently from malnutrition.
“I’m speaking about sluggish dying of these individuals,” he mentioned within the report.
Israel took duty for the strike, claiming al-Shariff was a frontrunner of a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Shariff had beforehand dismissed as baseless, The Related Press reported. The incident marked the primary time throughout the conflict that Israel’s navy has swiftly claimed duty after a journalist was killed in a strike.
Because the conflict started, Israel has refused to permit worldwide journalists into Gaza, other than uncommon invites to watch Israeli navy operations with IDF escorts — that means the burden of documenting the conflict there has fallen on Palestinian journalists contained in the Strip. That work has been lethal: A minimum of 178 Palestinian journalists and media employees have been killed throughout the conflict, based on the Committee to Shield Journalists.
The Overseas Press Affiliation, the oldest affiliation of worldwide journalists on the earth, condemned Israel’s focusing on of journalists reporting on the conflict in Gaza.
“Over the previous 22 months, the Israeli navy has repeatedly labelled Palestinian journalists as militants, usually with out verifiable proof, turning them into targets,” the FPA mentioned in a press release on Monday.
The killing of al-Sharif got here lower than a yr after Israeli military officers first accused him and different Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the terrorist teams Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera known as the strike a “focused assassination” and accused Israeli officers of incitement.
“Anas and his colleagues had been among the many final remaining voices from inside Gaza, offering the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground protection of the devastating realities endured by its individuals,” the Qatari community mentioned in a press release.
With worldwide media barred from coming into Gaza, Al Jazeera is among the many few shops nonetheless fielding a giant crew of reporters contained in the besieged strip, chronicling each day life amid airstrikes, starvation and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.
The community has suffered heavy losses throughout the conflict, together with 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed final summer season, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.
Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the many six that Israel accused of being members of militant teams final October.
A whole lot of individuals, together with many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qureiqa and their colleagues. Their our bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at Gaza Metropolis’s Shifa Hospital advanced.
AFP/AFPTV by way of Getty Pictures
Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate mentioned reporters had been being intentionally focused and urged the worldwide neighborhood to behave.
Al-Sharif reported a close-by bombardment minutes earlier than his dying. In a social media submit that Al Jazeera mentioned was written to be posted in case of his dying, he bemoaned the devastation and destruction that conflict had wrought and bid farewell to his spouse, son and daughter.
“I by no means hesitated for a single day to convey the reality as it’s, with out distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.
The journalists are the most recent to be killed in what observers have known as the deadliest battle for journalists in trendy instances. The Committee to Shield Journalists mentioned on Sunday that a minimum of 186 have been killed in Gaza, and Brown College’s Watson Institute in April mentioned the conflict was “fairly merely, the worst ever battle for reporters.”
Irene Khan, the U.N. Particular Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 mentioned that these killings had been “a part of a deliberate technique of Israel to suppress the reality, hinder the documentation of worldwide crimes and bury any chance of future accountability.”
The Committee to Shield Journalists mentioned on Sunday that it was appalled by the strike.
“Israel’s sample of labeling journalists as militants with out offering credible proof raises severe questions on its intent and respect for press freedom,” Sara Qudah, the group’s regional director, mentioned in a press release.
Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and troopers raided its places of work within the occupied West Financial institution final yr, ordering them closed.
Debora Patta and
Haley Ott
contributed to this report.
