Five journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza, including the prominent reporter Anas al-Sharif.
Mohammed Qreiqeh, a fellow reporter, was also killed in the strike, alongside cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.
They were in a tent for journalists outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City at the time of the strike.
Al Jazeera has condemned the murder of its journalists as a “targeted assassination”, and said it showed “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”.
“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities,” the statement added.
“The order to assassinate Anas Al Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”
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The IDF confirmed that they had targeted al-Sharif, claiming that he “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.
However, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had recently expressed concern that the 28-year-old journalist was “being targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign”.
“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,” Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the CPJ, told the BBC.
Israel has killed more than 200 reporters and media workers since the war in Gaza began.
It has refused to allow international reporters into Gaza, meaning that many outlets rely on local journalists to get information on what is going on.
Shortly before he was killed, al-Sharif shared a video to X, in which he showed Israel’s intensive missile bombing of Gaza, and said the aggression on Gaza City had ‘intensified’.
He wrote a final message on April 6, to be released in the event of his death.
In the message, al-Sharif said he “lived the pain in all its details” and “tasted grief and loss repeatedly”.
“Despite that, I never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation, hoping that God would witness those who remained silent, those who accepted our killing, and those who suffocated our very breaths,” he said.
“Not even the mangled bodies of our children and women moved their hearts or stopped the massacre that our people have been subjected to for over a year and a half.”
He also showed regret for having to leave his wife, Bayan, behind, and not getting to see his children, Salah and Sham, grow up.