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If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For [the] past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.
By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.
I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.
— Hossam Shabat, killed in a targeted drone strike, March 2025
In October 2023, as Israel began its offensive in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was well into its second year. By then, 15 journalists and media workers had been killed there. In just over two weeks, Israeli forces surpassed that toll in Gaza. Within ten weeks, they had killed more journalists than “any other army or entity . . . in any single year” since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began documenting such deaths in 1992.
Attacks on the press continued at an unprecedented pace for two years. By December 2025, Israel had killed at least 206 journalists and media workers in Gaza, 31 in Yemen, 6 in Lebanon, and 3 in Iran. These CPJ figures are likely an undercount: months earlier, the U.N. Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory reported 227 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.
The nature of these killings is as revealing as their scale. They included sniper fire, drone strikes, journalists bombed in tents, and airstrikes on press workers at home with their families. Israeli forces also struck public spaces where journalists sought internet access and carried out double-tap strikes, killing both press and first responders in follow-up attacks. “In the early days . . . Reuters shared with the Israeli military locations of its teams in Gaza . . . to try to ensure they would not be targeted,” a spokesperson for the news agency said. “But after many journalists were killed in IDF strikes, Reuters stopped giving precise coordinates.”
As Palestinian voices were being silenced within Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade on international media, barring independent access. In July 2024, “more than 70 media and civil society organizations,” including the Associated Press, The Guardian, the BBC, Agence France-Presse, and CNN, signed an open letter urging Israeli authorities to “end immediately the restrictions on foreign media entering Gaza” — to no avail. The blockade persisted for more than two years, including the 58-day “ceasefire” from January to March 2025, and remains in place as of this writing.
Denied independent access, select Western journalists were taken on guided tours “under strict military supervision.” These “highly-controlled, infrequent trips” lasted only “a few hours,” and their itineraries were planned by the military. While in Gaza, correspondents were banned from speaking to Palestinians. Israeli authorities also required outlets to submit footage for review and deleted segments as they saw fit.
In 2025, a few journalists joined airdrop flights over the Strip. “We were given quite a clear and strict pre-flight briefing that the Israelis have said we’re not allowed to film any shots of Gaza from the air, and that if we do, these airdrop flights could either be canceled or delayed,” Sky correspondent Sally Lockwood reported. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen noted, “Israel will not allow reporters like myself to enter Gaza to report the story, and they don’t want us to see it — to film it, anyway — from above, either.” A CBC reporter described a similar experience: “We cannot show you what we see outside these windows. The Israelis have forbidden any media images of what’s happened down on the ground. But we can see the flattened landscape of neighbourhoods.”
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Direct shootings began early and continued throughout the offensive. Israeli snipers killed journalists Asem Al-Barsh and Yasser Mamdouh. Al-Barsh was killed on his way home from work at a radio station; Mamdouh was reporting near Al-Nasser Hospital when he was shot “as he tried to recover the body of a young man” in front of the medical complex. In another attack, Mamdouh Qanita was working in the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital courtyard — in a designated press area — when a quadcopter shot him in the head.
Weeks after breaking a story that drew international attention, Mohammad Balousha was also shot by a sniper. He survived and returned to work about five months later. On December 14, 2024, an Israeli drone struck the journalist twice about 700 meters from his home, as he returned from a medical check-up for his gunshot wounds. He died before paramedics could reach him.
The widely reported story, which likely cost Balousha his life, described what he found inside the abandoned Al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital.
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Before ordering the hospital evacuated, Israeli forces struck the children’s inpatient department, water tanks, and oxygen extractors. “Satellite imagery reviewed by CNN from [the following day] shows large craters around the hospital complex, indicating the area had been under bombardment,” CNN reported. The IDF then gave Al-Nasr staff a 30-minute window to leave. In a recorded call, a senior officer assured a hospital official that ambulances would be available, but none arrived, leaving patients on life support stranded.
After weeks in which the hospital complex was “largely unreachable to journalists,” Balousha managed to enter. There, he found the decomposing remains of “at least four infants” in the ICU ward. His discovery of those left behind without any means of medical evacuation was covered by The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC, among others. When CNN repeatedly asked why, despite the officer’s assurance, ambulances were not provided, “the IDF did not directly respond.”
In another attack, on August 25, 2025, an Israeli tank fired on an outside staircase at Nasser Hospital, killing Reuters correspondent Hussam al-Masri. According to hospital officials, he had broadcast from the site “almost daily.” “Witnesses said a drone frequently observed the position, including about 40 minutes before the attack,” the Associated Press reported.
“Minutes after medical and emergency workers and journalists gathered there to help casualties from the first strike,” a tank fired again. The second strike killed journalists Moaz Abu Taha, Mariam Abu Dagga, Ahmed Abu Aziz, and Al Jazeera camera operator Mohammed Salama. In total, the attacks left 22 dead.
In a statement on the assault, the CPJ described a “double tap” as a “military tactic designed to maximize casualties by firing on first responders, such as medical personnel, rescue workers, and journalists.” Israeli forces repeatedly employed this tactic, as in a June 2025 shelling of a home east of Gaza City.
Freelance photographer Moamen Abu AlOuf accompanied paramedics to cover the aftermath. “As soon as the medical crews began retrieving the bodies and rescuing the wounded, and as Moamen documented their work, Israeli artillery targeted them directly,” journalist Anas Al-Sharif told the CPJ. “He was killed instantly.” Abu AlOuf had “covered events in Gaza City and the northern regions of the Strip.”
Journalist Noureddine Abdo was also killed in a double-tap strike — this time on a school sheltering displaced families. He died in the second bombing while covering the aftermath of the first.
Strikes on public spaces where journalists worked also became routine. The same day Abdo was killed at the Al-Karama school, Israeli airstrikes hit “the last restaurant still open in Gaza City.” Once a “Gaza City landmark—bustling with patrons,” Thai Restaurant by then served “only hot drinks and slices of pizza,” journalist Rasha Abou Jalal wrote. “The restaurant became a popular gathering place for journalists who are always looking for power sources to charge their phones and equipment, and a place with reliable internet to file their stories. I would come to the restaurant at least twice a week with my laptop and sit at one of the tables to finish my articles.”
The strike, along with a nearly simultaneous hit on a crowded market about 100 meters away, killed at least 33 Palestinians. Among them was journalist Yahya Sobeih, who hours earlier “had welcomed his newborn daughter into the world.”
The following month, an airstrike hit a café popular among journalists and locals for its internet access. Photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab and artist Frans al-Salmi were among those killed.
“I made my way [that] morning to my cherished refuge, my favorite café,” journalist Bayan Abusultan recalled. “I wanted to sit at my usual table, but (Frans) and (Ismail) had already claimed it . . . They were filming a video of a speech that (Ismail) was going to present at his ‘Between the sky and the sea’ exhibition which is touring the world . . . (Ismail) looked more elegant than usual that day, so I teased him, saying ‘Rolling in money, aren’t you, my friend?’ He laughed and replied, ‘I’m broke!’ . . . I left them to continue filming . . . [at around 3:00 pm] I found myself thrown to the ground with a high-pitched ringing inside my head and blood covering me.”
Abusultan managed to look around: “Half a meter away, a woman was trying to crawl, looking into my eyes as if to say something—but she passed away within seconds . . . I glanced toward (Frans) and (Ismail)’s table and saw that they had passed away.”
At least 41 people were killed and 75 injured, according to the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, who said “most of the casualties are women and children.” Nevertheless, the IDF assured CNN that they struck “several” “terrorists” and that “steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians using aerial surveillance.”
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For 18 months, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatma Hassouna documented airstrikes, displacement, and the killing of 11 relatives. On April 15, 2025, a documentary featuring her was selected for screening at Cannes. The next day, at “around 1:00am, while the family was asleep,” an Israeli strike killed Hassouna and “six members of her family, including her pregnant sister.”
“We had watched and selected a film where this young woman’s life force was nothing short of miraculous,” wrote the festival’s program committee, “As filmmakers committed to the diffusion of films, it is impossible for us to ignore the weight of this deliberate and programmatic erasing of faces, bodies, and places which [Fatma] spoke out for.”
Forensic Architecture investigated the attack and concluded that “[t]he missiles dropped by the Israeli military specifically targeted the Hassouna family’s apartment” on the second floor. “Our analysis indicates that Fatma Hassouna’s home was targeted using precision-guided munitions (PGMs), equipped with guidance and control systems—including GPS and a delay fuse—designed to detonate at [specific coordinates] and floor level.”
According to CPJ records, at least 92 journalists were killed in strikes while at home or in shelters, usually with their families.
Before his death, Mohammed Yaghi was working on a documentary about civil defense personnel. He was killed alongside his wife, Dania, their daughter Ayloul, and around 33 others in an airstrike that destroyed several homes. “Mohammed Abu Hatab had just returned home” after reporting live when an Israeli strike killed him and 11 family members. One day after journalist Saadi Madoukh was killed following a raid on “a home of the Madoukh family,” an Israeli airstrike killed Wafaa Abu Dabaan and her husband, Amjad Juhjouh — both journalists — along with their infant son. Mohammed Al Qrinawi and his wife survived a strike on their home, only to be killed months later with their children.
Even tents were not safe. On August 6, 2024, journalist Mohammed Issa Abu Saada visited his uncle’s home to upload footage using the family’s internet connection. They were living “in a tent next to the ruins of their house.” Shortly after he arrived, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at the makeshift shelter, killing Abu Saada and several family members.
“Mohammed was a specialist in drone photography,” journalist Mazen Al Breim told the CPJ. “But after several operations in which the Israeli army bombed journalists specializing in this field, including the bombing and killing of colleague Mustafa Abu Thuraya on January 7 of [that] year, [he] decided not to use [drones] too much because he began to notice that [journalists using them] were being deliberately targeted. He relied on a regular camera for photography only.”
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Speaking the day after an Israeli drone killed journalist Hossam Shabat, Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani observed: “We’ve now reached the stage where Israel no longer denies targeting journalists, but claims it is justified in doing so. It no longer denies it is bombing and destroying hospitals, but claims that it is justified in doing so. It no longer denies that it’s murdering children by the bushel, but claims that it is right to do so.” Shabat, the young reporter whose final message opens this piece, worked for Al Jazeera Mubashar and Drop Site News. The IDF quickly claimed his killing, alleging that he was a “terrorist.”
Israeli authorities offered no evidence that any journalist whose killing they publicly claimed had participated in “terrorist” activity.
Even for those who consider the genocidal campaign on Gaza a “war,” in which active Palestinian combatants are treated as legitimate targets — and who, despite the murders detailed above, regard Israeli authorities as credible sources — no evidence was offered that these journalists ever engaged in combat of any kind.
Notably, the reporters the IDF bothered to label as “terrorists” before killing, such as Shabat, Ismail al-Ghoul, and Anas Al-Sharif, were primarily those with larger audiences and international reach.
The assassination of Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul, “one of Gaza’s most recognisable reporters,” was an early example. He covered the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, five of her relatives, and the paramedics who tried to rescue them. He also reported on the February 2024 attack that came to be known as the Flour Massacre and the March 2024 Israeli forces raid of Al-Shifa Hospital. “To many in the Arabic-speaking world, [al-Ghoul] was the face of [the] coverage,” The Washington Post notes. “He broadcast daily from northern Gaza, which Israel’s military cut off from the rest of the territory.”
“I stand every day at the top of the hour gripped by intense bewilderment over what suffering to begin my live broadcast with: the relentless shelling and killing, or the displacement and severed lifelines for families on the streets of Gaza, or the hunger and famine and scarcity of supplies, or the collapsing health situation,” he wrote weeks before his assassination.
On July 31, 2024, al-Ghoul was reporting with his cameraman, Rami al-Rifi, when a strike hit a house near their location. They notified their news desk and “were told to leave immediately.” Less than five minutes after they drove away, a drone hit their car. Both men were killed, along with 17-year-old Khaled al-Shawa, who had been out on a bike delivering food to an elderly man.
The next day, Israeli forces claimed credit for killing al-Ghoul without acknowledging the deaths of al-Rifi and al-Shawa. In a press release, the IDF presented a screenshot it alleged was of a 2021 document “found on Hamas computers.” The screenshot lists the journalist as having received a military rank in 2007 — when he would have been ten years old — and names his specialty as “engineering.” The statement also claimed that, “as part of his role in the military wing,” he was “actively involved in recording and publicizing attacks against IDF troops.” If any example exists of al-Ghoul “recording and publicizing” an attack that was not simply a press report on active fighting, the IDF did not provide it.
Finally, the release also accused the journalist of participating in the October 7, 2023 attacks. When The Washington Post asked for evidence, the Israeli military “said it had ‘no further comment.’”
The IDF statement omitted the inconvenient fact that the man whose killing it attempted to justify was among a group of journalists Israeli forces had detained and released four months earlier during a raid on Al-Shifa Hospital. In that raid, press satellite trucks were destroyed, and the journalists were stripped, “forced to lie on their stomachs,” and blindfolded.
If Israeli forces had any incriminating information about al-Ghoul, yet failed to notice that he was one of the journalists they rounded up, the public demands for his release by the CPJ and Al Jazeera should have alerted them. The widely reported incident was even raised at a U.S. Department of State briefing that day. Asked about the “correspondent [who] was arrested . . . in al-Shifa complex outskirts,” and who “was beaten, stripped, and got his equipment destroyed,” deputy spokesperson Patel said, “We’re aware of those reports and we’ve asked the Government of Israel for more information.” After the IDF assassinated the journalist, CPJ asked “why [al-Ghoul] was released after the [2024] Al-Shifa raid.” The IDF responded by denying that he was ever in custody.
Like al-Ghoul, Anas Al-Sharif remained in the north and “became a near-constant presence on television and online, reporting almost every day.” In November 2023, he received threatening calls from the Israeli military, telling him to stop reporting and leave northern Gaza. Weeks later, an Israeli airstrike hit his family home and killed his father. Despite this, Al-Sharif continued to broadcast stories from the Strip and was part of the Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
In October 2024, the IDF claimed that Al-Sharif was a “terrorist” operative. To justify an accusation that, to Israel and its backers, amounts to an extrajudicial death sentence for Palestinians, it again offered screenshots as evidence — screenshots of alleged documents never independently verified, and claiming past affiliation rather than “terrorism” or actual combat. One lists Al-Sharif, in a 2017 entry, as injured in military training with “severe hearing loss in the left ear [and] vision impairment in the left eye.” Another, in an entry dated January 2019, lists the journalist as a member of a Gaza brigade.
Once again, with this clear and public threat to his life, he continued his work.
In one broadcast, Al-Sharif was on air covering an attack that killed 22 people. As he read from the report, he said, “One of the homes that was targeted—” then paused for a moment, “belonged to the Al-Sharif family in Beit Lahia.” He then continued until another speaker, Abdulqader, interrupted to ask, “Are they your relatives?” Al-Sharif answered slowly: “Yes, of course, Abdulqader. Of course, they are my relatives,” and proceeded with the report. That broadcast was one of many, over nearly two years, in which he covered devastating events with extraordinary composure. It is notable because of how Israeli authorities reacted when, months later, footage of a visibly emotional Al-Sharif went viral.
On July 20, 2025, reporting from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex on malnutrition and the lack of food, he took a moment to hold back tears. Minutes later, a woman nearby collapsed from hunger. As Al-Sharif directed his camera toward her and described the scene, his voice broke. “I couldn’t hold back my emotions... People were collapsing from hunger . . . as the bodies of dozens killed by Israeli forces arrived—targeted while trying to get a bag of flour,” he wrote afterward. The footage spread quickly and began the IDF’s final campaign to paint the journalist as a target.
On July 23, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee accused Al-Sharif of “starring” in a “fabricated drama” made with “support from the terrorist Hamas.” The next day, he claimed the journalist was “part of Hamas’s military machine” and conducting “a personal media campaign that may aim to elevate his organizational standing in the Qassam Brigades.”
The CPJ publicly called for Al-Sharif’s protection. It warned that, “The [IDF] Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee has stepped up his online attacks on al-Sharif, by falsely alleging that he is a Hamas terrorist.” Regional Director Sara Qudah added, “the danger to his life is now acute . . . These latest unfounded accusations represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill Al-Sharif.” The U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression also raised the alarm: “I call on all States, especially those who pride themselves on being champions of media freedom and safety for journalists, not to remain silent in the face of this blatant assault on journalists . . . I urge them to use their diplomatic channels to stop Israel from targeting Anas Al-Sharif and other journalists in Gaza who are only doing their job of telling the truth to the world.”
“I live with the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment. My family is also in danger,” the journalist told the CPJ. “This feeling is difficult and painful, but it does not push me back. Rather, it motivates me to continue fulfilling my duty and conveying the suffering of our people, even if it costs me my life.”
Late on Sunday, August 10, 2025, just weeks after these warnings, an Israeli strike on “a tent housing journalists” outside Al-Shifa Hospital’s main gate killed Al-Sharif, alongside journalists Mohammed Qreiqeh and Mohammed al-Khalidi, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Momen Aliwa. The IDF proudly announced the strike, reiterating their accusations against Al-Sharif. They did not bother to acknowledge the five other press workers killed.
If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For [the] past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.
By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.
I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.
— Hossam Shabat, killed in a targeted drone strike, March 2025
In October 2023, as Israel began its offensive in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was well into its second year. By then, 15 journalists and media workers had been killed there. In just over two weeks, Israeli forces surpassed that toll in Gaza. Within ten weeks, they had killed more journalists than “any other army or entity . . . in any single year” since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began documenting such deaths in 1992.
Attacks on the press continued at an unprecedented pace for two years. By December 2025, Israel had killed at least 206 journalists and media workers in Gaza, 31 in Yemen, 6 in Lebanon, and 3 in Iran. These CPJ figures are likely an undercount: months earlier, the U.N. Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory reported 227 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.
The nature of these killings is as revealing as their scale. They included sniper fire, drone strikes, journalists bombed in tents, and airstrikes on press workers at home with their families. Israeli forces also struck public spaces where journalists sought internet access and carried out double-tap strikes, killing both press and first responders in follow-up attacks. “In the early days . . . Reuters shared with the Israeli military locations of its teams in Gaza . . . to try to ensure they would not be targeted,” a spokesperson for the news agency said. “But after many journalists were killed in IDF strikes, Reuters stopped giving precise coordinates.”
As Palestinian voices were being silenced within Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade on international media, barring independent access. In July 2024, “more than 70 media and civil society organizations,” including the Associated Press, The Guardian, the BBC, Agence France-Presse, and CNN, signed an open letter urging Israeli authorities to “end immediately the restrictions on foreign media entering Gaza” — to no avail. The blockade persisted for more than two years, including the 58-day “ceasefire” from January to March 2025, and remains in place as of this writing.
Denied independent access, select Western journalists were taken on guided tours “under strict military supervision.” These “highly-controlled, infrequent trips” lasted only “a few hours,” and their itineraries were planned by the military. While in Gaza, correspondents were banned from speaking to Palestinians. Israeli authorities also required outlets to submit footage for review and deleted segments as they saw fit.
In 2025, a few journalists joined airdrop flights over the Strip. “We were given quite a clear and strict pre-flight briefing that the Israelis have said we’re not allowed to film any shots of Gaza from the air, and that if we do, these airdrop flights could either be canceled or delayed,” Sky correspondent Sally Lockwood reported. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen noted, “Israel will not allow reporters like myself to enter Gaza to report the story, and they don’t want us to see it — to film it, anyway — from above, either.” A CBC reporter described a similar experience: “We cannot show you what we see outside these windows. The Israelis have forbidden any media images of what’s happened down on the ground. But we can see the flattened landscape of neighbourhoods.”
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Direct shootings began early and continued throughout the offensive. Israeli snipers killed journalists Asem Al-Barsh and Yasser Mamdouh. Al-Barsh was killed on his way home from work at a radio station; Mamdouh was reporting near Al-Nasser Hospital when he was shot “as he tried to recover the body of a young man” in front of the medical complex. In another attack, Mamdouh Qanita was working in the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital courtyard — in a designated press area — when a quadcopter shot him in the head.
Weeks after breaking a story that drew international attention, Mohammad Balousha was also shot by a sniper. He survived and returned to work about five months later. On December 14, 2024, an Israeli drone struck the journalist twice about 700 meters from his home, as he returned from a medical check-up for his gunshot wounds. He died before paramedics could reach him.
The widely reported story, which likely cost Balousha his life, described what he found inside the abandoned Al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital.
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Before ordering the hospital evacuated, Israeli forces struck the children’s inpatient department, water tanks, and oxygen extractors. “Satellite imagery reviewed by CNN from [the following day] shows large craters around the hospital complex, indicating the area had been under bombardment,” CNN reported. The IDF then gave Al-Nasr staff a 30-minute window to leave. In a recorded call, a senior officer assured a hospital official that ambulances would be available, but none arrived, leaving patients on life support stranded.
After weeks in which the hospital complex was “largely unreachable to journalists,” Balousha managed to enter. There, he found the decomposing remains of “at least four infants” in the ICU ward. His discovery of those left behind without any means of medical evacuation was covered by The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC, among others. When CNN repeatedly asked why, despite the officer’s assurance, ambulances were not provided, “the IDF did not directly respond.”
In another attack, on August 25, 2025, an Israeli tank fired on an outside staircase at Nasser Hospital, killing Reuters correspondent Hussam al-Masri. According to hospital officials, he had broadcast from the site “almost daily.” “Witnesses said a drone frequently observed the position, including about 40 minutes before the attack,” the Associated Press reported.
“Minutes after medical and emergency workers and journalists gathered there to help casualties from the first strike,” a tank fired again. The second strike killed journalists Moaz Abu Taha, Mariam Abu Dagga, Ahmed Abu Aziz, and Al Jazeera camera operator Mohammed Salama. In total, the attacks left 22 dead.
In a statement on the assault, the CPJ described a “double tap” as a “military tactic designed to maximize casualties by firing on first responders, such as medical personnel, rescue workers, and journalists.” Israeli forces repeatedly employed this tactic, as in a June 2025 shelling of a home east of Gaza City.
Freelance photographer Moamen Abu AlOuf accompanied paramedics to cover the aftermath. “As soon as the medical crews began retrieving the bodies and rescuing the wounded, and as Moamen documented their work, Israeli artillery targeted them directly,” journalist Anas Al-Sharif told the CPJ. “He was killed instantly.” Abu AlOuf had “covered events in Gaza City and the northern regions of the Strip.”
Journalist Noureddine Abdo was also killed in a double-tap strike — this time on a school sheltering displaced families. He died in the second bombing while covering the aftermath of the first.
Strikes on public spaces where journalists worked also became routine. The same day Abdo was killed at the Al-Karama school, Israeli airstrikes hit “the last restaurant still open in Gaza City.” Once a “Gaza City landmark—bustling with patrons,” Thai Restaurant by then served “only hot drinks and slices of pizza,” journalist Rasha Abou Jalal wrote. “The restaurant became a popular gathering place for journalists who are always looking for power sources to charge their phones and equipment, and a place with reliable internet to file their stories. I would come to the restaurant at least twice a week with my laptop and sit at one of the tables to finish my articles.”
The strike, along with a nearly simultaneous hit on a crowded market about 100 meters away, killed at least 33 Palestinians. Among them was journalist Yahya Sobeih, who hours earlier “had welcomed his newborn daughter into the world.”
The following month, an airstrike hit a café popular among journalists and locals for its internet access. Photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab and artist Frans al-Salmi were among those killed.
“I made my way [that] morning to my cherished refuge, my favorite café,” journalist Bayan Abusultan recalled. “I wanted to sit at my usual table, but (Frans) and (Ismail) had already claimed it . . . They were filming a video of a speech that (Ismail) was going to present at his ‘Between the sky and the sea’ exhibition which is touring the world . . . (Ismail) looked more elegant than usual that day, so I teased him, saying ‘Rolling in money, aren’t you, my friend?’ He laughed and replied, ‘I’m broke!’ . . . I left them to continue filming . . . [at around 3:00 pm] I found myself thrown to the ground with a high-pitched ringing inside my head and blood covering me.”
Abusultan managed to look around: “Half a meter away, a woman was trying to crawl, looking into my eyes as if to say something—but she passed away within seconds . . . I glanced toward (Frans) and (Ismail)’s table and saw that they had passed away.”
At least 41 people were killed and 75 injured, according to the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, who said “most of the casualties are women and children.” Nevertheless, the IDF assured CNN that they struck “several” “terrorists” and that “steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians using aerial surveillance.”
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For 18 months, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatma Hassouna documented airstrikes, displacement, and the killing of 11 relatives. On April 15, 2025, a documentary featuring her was selected for screening at Cannes. The next day, at “around 1:00am, while the family was asleep,” an Israeli strike killed Hassouna and “six members of her family, including her pregnant sister.”
“We had watched and selected a film where this young woman’s life force was nothing short of miraculous,” wrote the festival’s program committee, “As filmmakers committed to the diffusion of films, it is impossible for us to ignore the weight of this deliberate and programmatic erasing of faces, bodies, and places which [Fatma] spoke out for.”
Forensic Architecture investigated the attack and concluded that “[t]he missiles dropped by the Israeli military specifically targeted the Hassouna family’s apartment” on the second floor. “Our analysis indicates that Fatma Hassouna’s home was targeted using precision-guided munitions (PGMs), equipped with guidance and control systems—including GPS and a delay fuse—designed to detonate at [specific coordinates] and floor level.”
According to CPJ records, at least 92 journalists were killed in strikes while at home or in shelters, usually with their families.
Before his death, Mohammed Yaghi was working on a documentary about civil defense personnel. He was killed alongside his wife, Dania, their daughter Ayloul, and around 33 others in an airstrike that destroyed several homes. “Mohammed Abu Hatab had just returned home” after reporting live when an Israeli strike killed him and 11 family members. One day after journalist Saadi Madoukh was killed following a raid on “a home of the Madoukh family,” an Israeli airstrike killed Wafaa Abu Dabaan and her husband, Amjad Juhjouh — both journalists — along with their infant son. Mohammed Al Qrinawi and his wife survived a strike on their home, only to be killed months later with their children.
Even tents were not safe. On August 6, 2024, journalist Mohammed Issa Abu Saada visited his uncle’s home to upload footage using the family’s internet connection. They were living “in a tent next to the ruins of their house.” Shortly after he arrived, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at the makeshift shelter, killing Abu Saada and several family members.
“Mohammed was a specialist in drone photography,” journalist Mazen Al Breim told the CPJ. “But after several operations in which the Israeli army bombed journalists specializing in this field, including the bombing and killing of colleague Mustafa Abu Thuraya on January 7 of [that] year, [he] decided not to use [drones] too much because he began to notice that [journalists using them] were being deliberately targeted. He relied on a regular camera for photography only.”
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Speaking the day after an Israeli drone killed journalist Hossam Shabat, Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani observed: “We’ve now reached the stage where Israel no longer denies targeting journalists, but claims it is justified in doing so. It no longer denies it is bombing and destroying hospitals, but claims that it is justified in doing so. It no longer denies that it’s murdering children by the bushel, but claims that it is right to do so.” Shabat, the young reporter whose final message opens this piece, worked for Al Jazeera Mubashar and Drop Site News. The IDF quickly claimed his killing, alleging that he was a “terrorist.”
Israeli authorities offered no evidence that any journalist whose killing they publicly claimed had participated in “terrorist” activity.
Even for those who consider the genocidal campaign on Gaza a “war,” in which active Palestinian combatants are treated as legitimate targets — and who, despite the murders detailed above, regard Israeli authorities as credible sources — no evidence was offered that these journalists ever engaged in combat of any kind.
Notably, the reporters the IDF bothered to label as “terrorists” before killing, such as Shabat, Ismail al-Ghoul, and Anas Al-Sharif, were primarily those with larger audiences and international reach.
The assassination of Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul, “one of Gaza’s most recognisable reporters,” was an early example. He covered the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, five of her relatives, and the paramedics who tried to rescue them. He also reported on the February 2024 attack that came to be known as the Flour Massacre and the March 2024 Israeli forces raid of Al-Shifa Hospital. “To many in the Arabic-speaking world, [al-Ghoul] was the face of [the] coverage,” The Washington Post notes. “He broadcast daily from northern Gaza, which Israel’s military cut off from the rest of the territory.”
“I stand every day at the top of the hour gripped by intense bewilderment over what suffering to begin my live broadcast with: the relentless shelling and killing, or the displacement and severed lifelines for families on the streets of Gaza, or the hunger and famine and scarcity of supplies, or the collapsing health situation,” he wrote weeks before his assassination.
On July 31, 2024, al-Ghoul was reporting with his cameraman, Rami al-Rifi, when a strike hit a house near their location. They notified their news desk and “were told to leave immediately.” Less than five minutes after they drove away, a drone hit their car. Both men were killed, along with 17-year-old Khaled al-Shawa, who had been out on a bike delivering food to an elderly man.
The next day, Israeli forces claimed credit for killing al-Ghoul without acknowledging the deaths of al-Rifi and al-Shawa. In a press release, the IDF presented a screenshot it alleged was of a 2021 document “found on Hamas computers.” The screenshot lists the journalist as having received a military rank in 2007 — when he would have been ten years old — and names his specialty as “engineering.” The statement also claimed that, “as part of his role in the military wing,” he was “actively involved in recording and publicizing attacks against IDF troops.” If any example exists of al-Ghoul “recording and publicizing” an attack that was not simply a press report on active fighting, the IDF did not provide it.
Finally, the release also accused the journalist of participating in the October 7, 2023 attacks. When The Washington Post asked for evidence, the Israeli military “said it had ‘no further comment.’”
The IDF statement omitted the inconvenient fact that the man whose killing it attempted to justify was among a group of journalists Israeli forces had detained and released four months earlier during a raid on Al-Shifa Hospital. In that raid, press satellite trucks were destroyed, and the journalists were stripped, “forced to lie on their stomachs,” and blindfolded.
If Israeli forces had any incriminating information about al-Ghoul, yet failed to notice that he was one of the journalists they rounded up, the public demands for his release by the CPJ and Al Jazeera should have alerted them. The widely reported incident was even raised at a U.S. Department of State briefing that day. Asked about the “correspondent [who] was arrested . . . in al-Shifa complex outskirts,” and who “was beaten, stripped, and got his equipment destroyed,” deputy spokesperson Patel said, “We’re aware of those reports and we’ve asked the Government of Israel for more information.” After the IDF assassinated the journalist, CPJ asked “why [al-Ghoul] was released after the [2024] Al-Shifa raid.” The IDF responded by denying that he was ever in custody.
Like al-Ghoul, Anas Al-Sharif remained in the north and “became a near-constant presence on television and online, reporting almost every day.” In November 2023, he received threatening calls from the Israeli military, telling him to stop reporting and leave northern Gaza. Weeks later, an Israeli airstrike hit his family home and killed his father. Despite this, Al-Sharif continued to broadcast stories from the Strip and was part of the Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
In October 2024, the IDF claimed that Al-Sharif was a “terrorist” operative. To justify an accusation that, to Israel and its backers, amounts to an extrajudicial death sentence for Palestinians, it again offered screenshots as evidence — screenshots of alleged documents never independently verified, and claiming past affiliation rather than “terrorism” or actual combat. One lists Al-Sharif, in a 2017 entry, as injured in military training with “severe hearing loss in the left ear [and] vision impairment in the left eye.” Another, in an entry dated January 2019, lists the journalist as a member of a Gaza brigade.
Once again, with this clear and public threat to his life, he continued his work.
In one broadcast, Al-Sharif was on air covering an attack that killed 22 people. As he read from the report, he said, “One of the homes that was targeted—” then paused for a moment, “belonged to the Al-Sharif family in Beit Lahia.” He then continued until another speaker, Abdulqader, interrupted to ask, “Are they your relatives?” Al-Sharif answered slowly: “Yes, of course, Abdulqader. Of course, they are my relatives,” and proceeded with the report. That broadcast was one of many, over nearly two years, in which he covered devastating events with extraordinary composure. It is notable because of how Israeli authorities reacted when, months later, footage of a visibly emotional Al-Sharif went viral.
On July 20, 2025, reporting from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex on malnutrition and the lack of food, he took a moment to hold back tears. Minutes later, a woman nearby collapsed from hunger. As Al-Sharif directed his camera toward her and described the scene, his voice broke. “I couldn’t hold back my emotions... People were collapsing from hunger . . . as the bodies of dozens killed by Israeli forces arrived—targeted while trying to get a bag of flour,” he wrote afterward. The footage spread quickly and began the IDF’s final campaign to paint the journalist as a target.
On July 23, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee accused Al-Sharif of “starring” in a “fabricated drama” made with “support from the terrorist Hamas.” The next day, he claimed the journalist was “part of Hamas’s military machine” and conducting “a personal media campaign that may aim to elevate his organizational standing in the Qassam Brigades.”
The CPJ publicly called for Al-Sharif’s protection. It warned that, “The [IDF] Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee has stepped up his online attacks on al-Sharif, by falsely alleging that he is a Hamas terrorist.” Regional Director Sara Qudah added, “the danger to his life is now acute . . . These latest unfounded accusations represent an effort to manufacture consent to kill Al-Sharif.” The U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression also raised the alarm: “I call on all States, especially those who pride themselves on being champions of media freedom and safety for journalists, not to remain silent in the face of this blatant assault on journalists . . . I urge them to use their diplomatic channels to stop Israel from targeting Anas Al-Sharif and other journalists in Gaza who are only doing their job of telling the truth to the world.”
“I live with the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment. My family is also in danger,” the journalist told the CPJ. “This feeling is difficult and painful, but it does not push me back. Rather, it motivates me to continue fulfilling my duty and conveying the suffering of our people, even if it costs me my life.”
Late on Sunday, August 10, 2025, just weeks after these warnings, an Israeli strike on “a tent housing journalists” outside Al-Shifa Hospital’s main gate killed Al-Sharif, alongside journalists Mohammed Qreiqeh and Mohammed al-Khalidi, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Momen Aliwa. The IDF proudly announced the strike, reiterating their accusations against Al-Sharif. They did not bother to acknowledge the five other press workers killed.