Al Jazeera has reported that five of its journalists were killed in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, including the well-known reporter Anas al-Sharif. The Israeli army admitted that it targeted him because, it claims, he was a terrorist.
The television station, headquartered in Qatar, says that it appears to have been a targeted Israeli attack on a tent used by its journalists in Gaza City, in front of Al-Shifa Hospital.
In addition to the journalist Anas al-Sharif, whose death the television station had previously reported, another correspondent, Mohammed Kreikeh, was killed, as were cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliva, who were in the journalists’ tent near the main gate of the hospital when the tent was hit, Al Jazeera reported.
The targeted killing on Sunday was another blatant, premeditated attack on media freedom, Al Jazeera announced, according to the BBC.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that they targeted Anas al-Sharif, stating that he served as a “head of a terrorist cell in Hamas” and that he organized rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed outrage over the attack and said that Israel had not provided evidence to prove its allegations against al-Sharif.
“This is a pattern we have already seen from Israel, not only in the current war but also in previous decades when Israeli forces kill a journalist, and then Israel says it’s a terrorist, but provides very little evidence to support those claims,” said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Al Jazeera’s CEO, Mohamed Moawad, told the BBC that al-Sharif was an accredited journalist who was the “only voice” in the world that knew what was happening in the Gaza Strip.
During the war, Israel has not allowed international journalists to enter Gaza to report freely. Therefore, many media outlets rely on reporters inside the territory for event coverage.
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“They were targeted in a tent, and they were not reporting from the front line,” Moawad said, speaking of the Israeli strike.
“The fact is that the Israeli government wants to silence the reporting of every channel from within Gaza itself,” he said, adding that this is something that has not been seen before in modern history.
According to Reporters Without Borders, almost 200 journalists have been killed in the war launched by Israel against Hamas in Gaza, after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Anas al-Sharif (28) was one of the most recognizable faces among the reporters who covered the conflict in Gaza daily.
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Source: N1, Foto: Reuters