Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

BBC:

Five Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the broadcaster has said.

Correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, alongside cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa were in a tent for journalists at the hospital’s main gate when it was targeted, Al Jazeera reported.

The “targeted assassination” on Sunday was “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, it said in a statement.

Shortly after the strike, the IDF confirmed that it had targeted Anas al-Sharif, writing in a Telegram post that he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.

The IDF did not mention any of the other journalists who were killed.

In total, seven people died in the strike, Al Jazeera reports. The broadcaster initially said that four of its staff had been killed, but revised it to five a few hours later.

Its managing editor, Mohamed Moawad, told the BBC that al-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.”