Five Al Jazeera journalists including prominent reporter Anas al-Sharif have been killed in a targeted Israeli strike near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
Sharif and another correspondent, Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa were in a tent for journalists at the hospital’s main gate when it was struck, the broadcaster said.
The “targeted assassination” on Sunday was “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, it said. The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was appalled by the attack.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted Sharif, alleging he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.
It also said he had “advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops” and claimed to have Hamas documents that showed he had been in one of the group’s units in 2019.
However, the CPJ said Israel had failed to provide evidence to back up its allegations.
“This is a pattern we’ve seen from Israel – not just in the current war, but in the decades preceding – in which typically a journalist will be killed by Israeli forces and then Israel will say after the fact that they are a terrorist, but provides very little evidence to back up those claims,” CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg told the BBC.
Al Jazeera’s managing editor Mohamed Moawad told the BBC that Sharif was an accredited journalist who was “the only voice” for the world to know what was happening in the Gaza Strip.
Throughout the war, Israel has not allowed international journalists into Gaza to report freely. Therefore, many outlets rely on local reporters within the territory for coverage.
“They were targeted in their tent, they weren’t covering from the front line,” Moawad said of the Israeli strike.
“The fact is that the Israeli government is wanting to silence the coverage of any channel of reporting from inside Gaza,” he told The Newsroom programme.
“This is something that I haven’t seen before in modern history.”
The director of Al Jazeera English, Salah Negm, told BBC’s Newsday programme that Al Jazeera knows the background and training of its journalists, and knows “the product they’re giving us, and we examine it from several sources, including what you’re reporting on the BBC”.
Sharif, 28, appeared to be posting on X in the moments before his death, warning of intense Israeli bombardment within Gaza City. A post that was published after he was reported to have died appears to have been pre-written and published by a friend.
In two graphic videos of the aftermath of the strike, which have been confirmed by BBC Verify, men can be seen carrying the bodies of those who were killed.
Some shout out Qreiqeh’s name, and a man wearing a media vest says that one of the bodies is that of Sharif.
In total, seven people died in the strike, Al Jazeera said. The broadcaster initially said that four of its staff had been killed, but revised it to five a few hours later.
Last month, the Al Jazeera Media Network – along with the United Nations and the CPJ – issued separate statements warning that Sharif’s life was in danger and calling for his protection.
IDF spokesperson Avichai Adraee posted a video in July of Sharif on X and accused him of being a member of Hamas’ military wing.
Irene Khan, a UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, called it “an unsubstantiated claim” and a “blatant assault on journalists”.
At the time, she said there was “growing evidence that journalists in Gaza have been targeted and killed by the Israeli army on the basis of unsubstantiated claims that they were Hamas terrorists”.
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