Anas al-Sharif, 28, was one of the Al Jazeera journalists killed by the airstrike Sunday.-/AFP/Getty Images
Israel’s military targeted and killed Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and others with an air strike late Sunday in Gaza, drawing condemnation from journalists and rights groups.
Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths of al-Sharif and colleagues, which the Committee to Protect Journalists and others described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell – an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.
The military has previously said it targeted individuals it described as Hamas militants posing as reporters. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.
Officials at Shifa Hospital said those killed while sheltering outside Gaza City’s largest hospital complex also included Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qreiqeh, plus four other journalists and two other people. Five of the six slain journalists were Al Jazeera staffers. The strike damaged the entrance to the complex’s emergency building.
The air strike occurred hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended a planned military offensive into some of Gaza’s most populated areas, including Gaza City, and said he directed the military to “bring in more foreign journalists” to Gaza.
Bombing in Gaza heaviest in weeks, day after Israeli airstrike kills six journalists
The strike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing. Al-Sharif and his employer denied the allegations as baseless.
Video contains graphic content: A prominent Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously been threatened by Israel, was killed along with four colleagues and another journalist in an Israeli airstrike in an attack condemned by journalists and rights groups.
Reuters
Condemnation has poured in from the U.N. human rights office, the Foreign Press Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Press Institute and Amnesty International, among others.
Al Jazeera called the strike a “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif’s death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.
“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.
Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid air strikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighbourhoods.
Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year. Israel at the time ordered the closure of its local offices, while preventing the broadcast of its reports and blocking its websites.
The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli air strike in March.
Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.
“Only a journalist that is a Hamas fighter or that is, at the time of attack, directly participating in hostilities can be intentionally targeted. Alerting the world to the starvation of civilians, reporting on Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, even disseminating pro-Hamas propaganda, none of this would count as direct participation in hostilities,” said Janina Dill, a professor of global security a the University of Oxford. She added that evidence is mounting that Israel considers anyone who it believes is a Hamas member to be a legitimate target.
“I do not consider this a reasonable interpretation of international humanitarian law,” Dill said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday that at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began. Sunday’s strike brings the total number of Al Jazeera staff journalists killed during the war to 11, not including 8 freelancers, according to CPJ data.
Irene Khan, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 said that the killings were “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”
In a social media post that Al Jazeera said was written to be posted in case of his death, al-Sharif bemoaned the devastation and destruction that war had wrought and bid farewell to his wife, son and daughter.
“I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” the 28-year-old wrote.
Hundreds of people, including many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qreiqeh and their colleagues. The bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at the Shifa Hospital complex.
Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said reporters were being deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.
Al-Sharif began reporting for Al Jazeera a few days after war broke out. He was known for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the starvation gripping much of the territory’s population.
He was previously part of a Reuters team that in 2024 won a Pulitzer Prize in the category of Breaking News Photography for coverage of the war.
In a July broadcast, al-Sharif cried on air as a woman behind him collapsed from hunger.
“I am talking about slow death of those people,” he said at the time.
Qreiqeh, a 33-year-old Gaza City native, is survived by two children.
Both journalists were separated from their families for months earlier in the war. When they managed to reunite during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children appeared unable to recognize them, according to video footage they posted at the time.
“Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues have been the eyes and voices of Gaza. Starved and exhausted, they continued to bravely report from the front lines, despite death threats and immense grief,” Amnesty International said in a statement Monday, adding that there must be an independent, impartial investigation into the killings of Palestinian journalists.
With a report from Reuters