Israel Kills Five Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza, Including Well-Known Reporter
Al Jazeera media outlet announced today that its correspondent Anas al-Sharif was killed in Gaza City, a fact also confirmed by the Israeli military.
Al Jazeera added that the well-known reporter Sharif, together with four other journalists, was killed in a tent, according to the director of Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The Israeli military stated that Sharif was pretending to be a journalist but was actually acting with the Islamist group Hamas.
In addition to journalist Anas al-Sharif, whose death the network had earlier reported, correspondent Mohamed Kreikeh and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohamed Nufal and Moamen Aliva were killed while in the journalists' tent near the hospital's main gate when the tent was hit, Al Jazeera reported.
Sunday’s targeted killing was yet another blatant premeditated attack on press freedom, Al Jazeera said, according to the BBC.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in July that it was concerned for Sharif’s safety and that he had been targeted by the Israeli military.
“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 say the person was a terrorist, but provide very little evidence to support those claims,” said CPJ executive director Jodie Ginsberg.
Al Jazeera director-general 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, Reuters reported.
During the war, Israel has not allowed international journalists to enter Gaza to report freely. As a result, many media outlets rely on reporters inside the territory to cover events.
“They were targeted in a tent, and were not reporting from the front line,” Moawad said, speaking about the Israeli strike.
“The fact is that the Israeli government wants to silence reporting from every channel inside Gaza itself,” he said, adding that this is something not previously seen in modern history.
According to Reporters Without Borders, almost 200 journalists have been killed in the war Israel launched against Hamas in Gaza after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Anas al-Sharif (28) was one of the most prominent faces among the correspondents who covered the conflict in Gaza on a daily basis.
