A prominent Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously been the target of threats from Israel, was killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. Journalists and human rights groups condemned their killing.
The Israeli military said it had targeted and killed Anas al-Sharif, claiming he led a Hamas militant cell and was involved in rocket attacks on Israel.
Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government, rejected the claim, and Al Sharif himself denied such accusations from Israel before his death.
"Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices in Gaza conveying the tragic reality to the world," Al Jazeera said.
Al-Sharif, 28, was among a group of four Al Jazeera journalists and an assistant who were killed in an airstrike on a tent near Al-Shifa Hospital in eastern Gaza City, Gaza and Al Jazeera officials said. A hospital official said two other people were killed.
A sixth journalist, local freelancer Mohammed al-Kaldi, was also killed in the attack, Al Shifa Hospital staff said yesterday.
Calling Al-Sharif "one of the bravest journalists in Gaza," Al Jazeera described the attack as "a desperate attempt to silence voices ahead of the occupation of Gaza."
"Israel's deliberate targeting of journalists in the Gaza Strip reveals a scale of crimes that surpasses imagination," Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani wrote on the X platform.
The United Nations human rights office condemned the killings, saying the Israeli military's actions constituted "grave violations of international humanitarian law," while Palestinians reported the heaviest bombardment in recent weeks.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is "gravely concerned" about the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza, his spokesman said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Al-Sharif led a Hamas cell and "was responsible for organizing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians" and Israeli troops, citing intelligence and documents it claims were found in Gaza but which it has not disclosed.
Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists, claiming that many of those killed in Israeli airstrikes were actually members of Islamist militant groups posing as journalists.
Israeli military spokesman Avichai Adrai posted on X.X undated photos purporting to show Al-Sharif with Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, and other Hamas officials.
This was reported by Reuters, which could not confirm the authenticity of the photos. The agency said it was not clear when the alleged photos were taken or how the military obtained them. Adrai wrote that only a “terrorist” would take a picture with Hamas officials, without providing any context as to why Al-Sharif allegedly met with them.
Al-Sharif was previously part of the Reuters team that won the Pulitzer Prize in the photography category in 2024 for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is the deadliest for journalists since records began, according to the “Costs of War” project by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said 7 journalists had been killed since the war began on October 2023, 238. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 186 journalists have been killed in the Gaza conflict.
A media freedom group and a United Nations expert have previously warned that Al-Sharif's life is in danger because of his reporting from Gaza. UN special rapporteur Irene Kahn said last month that Israeli allegations against him were unsupported by evidence.
The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is the deadliest for journalists since records began
Al Jazeera reported that Al Sharif left a message on social media to be published in the event of his death, which read: "...I have never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation, hoping that God will bear witness to those who have remained silent."
In October, the Israeli military named Al-Sharif as one of six Gaza journalists it claimed were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing documents it said contained lists of individuals who had completed training and received salaries.
"Al Jazeera categorically rejects the portrayal of our journalists by the Israeli occupation forces as terrorists and condemns their use of fabricated evidence," the network said at the time.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, which in July called on the international community to protect Al-Sharif, said in a statement that Israel had provided no evidence for its allegations against him.
Al-Sharif, whose account on X has more than 500.000 followers, announced on the platform minutes before his death that Israel had been intensively bombing Gaza City for more than two hours.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, said the killing could mark the start of an Israeli offensive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would launch a new offensive aimed at destroying Hamas strongholds in Gaza, where a hunger crisis is escalating after 22 months of war.
"The killings of journalists and the intimidation of those who remained pave the way for a major crime that the occupier plans to commit in Gaza City," Hamas said in a statement.
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