A prominent Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously been threatened by Israel, was killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday in an attack condemned by journalists and rights groups.
Israel’s military said it targeted and killed Anas Al Sharif, alleging he had headed a Hamas militant cell and was involved in rocket attacks on Israel, but rights advocates said he had been targeted for his frontline reporting on the Gaza war.
Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government, rejected the assertion, and before his death Al Sharif had also rejected the claims.
“Anas Al Sharif and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices in Gaza conveying the tragic reality to the world,” Al Jazeera said.
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Mr Sharif (28) was among a group of four Al Jazeera journalists and an assistant who died in an airstrike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in eastern Gaza City, Gaza officials and Al Jazeera said. An official at the hospital said two other people were also killed in the strike.
A sixth journalist, Mohammad Al-Khaldi, a local freelance reporter, was also killed, medics at Al Shifa Hospital said on Monday.
Calling Mr Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists”, Al Jazeera said the attack was a “desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza”.
The other journalists killed were Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, Al Jazeera said.
“The deliberate targeting of journalists by Israel in the Gaza Strip reveals how these crimes are beyond imagination,” Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, said on X.
The UN human rights office condemned the killing of the journalists, saying the actions by Israel’s military represented a “grave breach of international humanitarian law” as Palestinians reported the heaviest bombardments in weeks.
Its post on social media platform X was accompanied by a photograph of flattened blue tents next to a bullet-ridden wall in Gaza City.
British prime minister Keir Starmer is “gravely concerned” about the repeated targeting of journalists in Gaza, his spokesperson said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that Al Sharif headed a Hamas cell and “was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF [Israeli] troops”, citing intelligence and documents found in Gaza as evidence. It has not made these public.
Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists. It says many of those killed in Israeli airstrikes were members of Islamist militant groups, working under the guise of the press.
On Monday, people gathered at Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in the heart of the Gaza Strip to mourn the journalists. Friends, colleagues and relatives embraced and consoled one another, many wiping away tears as they bid farewell.
Al Sharif was previously part of a Reuters team which in 2024 won a Pulitzer Prize in the category of Breaking News Photography for coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is the deadliest on record for journalists, according to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs’ Costs of War project.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said 238 journalists have been killed since the war started on October 7th, 2023. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said at least 186 journalists have been killed in the Gaza conflict.
A press freedom group and a United Nations expert previously warned that Mr Sharif’s life was in danger due to his reporting from Gaza. UN special rapporteur Irene Khan said last month that Israel’s claims against him were unsubstantiated.
Al Jazeera said Mr Sharif had left a social media message to be posted in the event of his death that read, “...I never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation, hoping that God would witness those who remained silent.”
Last October, Israel’s military had named Mr Sharif as one of six Gaza journalists it alleged were members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing documents it said showed lists of people who completed training courses and salaries.
“Al Jazeera categorically rejects the Israeli occupation forces’ portrayal of our journalists as terrorists and denounces their use of fabricated evidence,” the network said in a statement at the time.
The CPJ, which in July urged the international community to protect Mr Sharif, said in a statement that Israel had failed to provide any evidence to back up its allegations against him.
Mr Sharif, whose X account showed more than 500,000 followers, posted on the platform minutes before his death that Israel had been intensely bombarding Gaza City for more than two hours.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs Gaza, said the killing may signal the start of an Israeli offensive.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he will launch a new offensive to dismantle Hamas strongholds in Gaza, where a hunger crisis is escalating after 22 months of war.
“The assassination of journalists and the intimidation of those who remain paves the way for a major crime that the occupation is planning to commit in Gaza City,” Hamas said in a statement.
– Reuters
