Attack on media tent leaves at least six journalists dead, five of them Al Jazeera staff
The army reiterates its accusations of Hamas affiliation against Al Sharif, which UN experts denounced as a "smear campaign"
Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif, one of the most prominent reporters covering the Gaza war, and four other journalists from the pan-Arab network Al Jazeera have been killed in an Israeli attack on a media tent in Gaza City, which has so far left a total of seven dead.
After the network reported, citing medical sources, the Israeli army confirmed on its X network account that Al Sharif was killed in an attack on the Palestinian enclave and reiterated a previous accusation that he was part of the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which the media outlet denied.
Al-Sharif, 28, from the Gazan town of Jabalia, Mohamed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohamed Nufal—who also served as the crew’s driver—and Moamen Aliwa were killed along with two other people when a projectile hit a journalists’ tent located outside Al-Shifa Hospital, the hospital’s director told the pan-Arab network.
One of the other two victims is fellow journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi, according to a later report by the Hamas-linked Al-Quds television network on its social media account.
In total, ten Al Jazeera employees have been killed by the Israeli army since the beginning of its offensive against the Gaza Strip in October 2023. According to figures from the Gazan authorities, under Hamas control, 237 media professionals have been killed in Israeli attacks since then, in what they have denounced as “premeditated, deliberate, and intentional” actions.
The Israeli army, through its spokesperson, Avichai Adraee, reported last month that Al Sharif was a member of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzeldin Al Qassam Brigades; an accusation rejected by the outlet and by the journalist himself, who claimed to be the victim of a “campaign of threats due to his work as a journalist.”
“I reaffirm: I, Anas Al Sharif, am a journalist with no political affiliation. My sole mission is to report the truth from the ground, as it is, without bias,” he stated on his social media account, denouncing that “at a time when a deadly famine is ravaging Gaza, telling the truth has become, in the eyes of the occupation, a threat.”
This Sunday, the Israeli army, after confirming the reporter’s death, insisted that he “was posing as an Al Jazeera journalist” when in reality “he was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and directed advanced rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and Israeli troops.
“Intelligence and documents from Gaza, including lists, terrorist training records, and payrolls, prove that he was an infiltrated Hamas operative. “A press credential is not a shield for terrorism,” the military said, adding that it has not commented on the deaths of the other three reporters.
At the end of July, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan, expressed alarm “at the repeated threats and accusations by the Israeli military” against the reporter.
“Fears for Al-Sharif’s safety are well-founded, as there is growing evidence that journalists in Gaza have been targeted and killed by the Israeli military based on unsubstantiated claims that they were Hamas terrorists,” Khan said.
She expressed deep concern that, without any evidence to support their claims, the Israeli military has repeatedly accused Al-Sharif and other Palestinian journalists of being terrorists or Hamas supporters.
Just hours ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in his first press conference before the joint international media in more than a year that he had instructed his security leadership to study the possibility. to lift restrictions on the entry of the international press, which were in place until now “for security reasons,” so that they can witness the Israeli Army’s efforts to protect the population, according to him.
