Palestinians examine on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, the destroyed tent the place journalists, together with Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qureiqa had been killed by an Israeli airstrike exterior the Gaza Metropolis’s Shifa hospital advanced.
Jehad Alshrafi/AP
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Jehad Alshrafi/AP
JERUSALEM — Israel’s army focused an Al Jazeera correspondent with an airstrike Sunday, killing him, one other community journalist and different individuals, all of whom had been sheltering exterior the Gaza Metropolis Hospital advanced.
Officers at Shifa Hospital mentioned these killed included Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohamed Qureiqa. The strike additionally killed 4 different journalists and two different individuals, hospital administrative director Rami Mohanna informed The Related Press. The strike additionally broken the doorway to the hospital advanced’s emergency constructing.
Each Israel and hospital officers in Gaza Metropolis confirmed the deaths, which press advocates described as retribution in opposition to these documenting the conflict in Gaza. Israel’s army later Sunday described al-Sharif because the chief of a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif had beforehand dismissed as baseless.
The incident marked the primary time in the course of the conflict that Israel’s army has swiftly claimed duty after a journalist was killed in a strike.
It got here lower than a 12 months after Israeli military officers first accused al-Sharif and different Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant teams Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s military spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being a part of Hamas’ army wing.
Al Jazeera known as the strike “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officers of incitement, connecting al-Sharif’s demise to the allegations that each the community 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 community mentioned in a press release.
Worldwide media have been principally barred from coming into Gaza all through the conflict and Al Jazeera is among the many few retailers nonetheless fielding a giant workforce of reporters inside Gaza, chronicling each day life amid airstrikes, starvation and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.
The community has suffered heavy losses in the course of the conflict, together with 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed final summer time, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.
Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the many six that Israel accused of being members of militant teams final October.
Tons of of individuals, together with many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qureiqa and their colleagues. The our bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at Gaza Metropolis’s Shifa Hospital advanced. Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate mentioned reporters had been being intentionally focused and urged the worldwide group to behave.
Al-Sharif reported a close-by bombardment minutes earlier than his demise. In a social media publish that Al Jazeera mentioned was written to be posted in case of his demise, he bemoaned the devastation and destruction that conflict had wrought and bid farewell to his spouse, 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.
The journalists are the newest to be killed in what observers have known as the deadliest battle for journalists in fashionable instances. The Committee to Shield Journalists mentioned on Sunday that at the very least 186 have been killed in Gaza and Brown College’s Watson Institute in April mentioned the conflict was “quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters.”
Al-Sharif started reporting for Al Jazeera just a few days after conflict broke out. He was identified for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the hunger gripping a lot of the territory’s inhabitants. Qureiqa, a 33-year-old Gaza Metropolis native, is survived by two kids.
Each journalists had been separated from their households for months earlier within the conflict. After they managed to reunite in the course of the ceasefire earlier this 12 months, their kids appeared unable to acknowledge them, based on video footage they posted on the time.
In a July broadcast al-Sharif cried on air as girl behind him collapsed from starvation.
“I am taking about slow death of those people,” he mentioned on the time.
Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and troopers raided its workplaces within the occupied West Financial institution final 12 months, ordering them closed.
Al-Sharif’s demise comes weeks after a U.N. professional and the New York-based Committee to Shield Journalists mentioned Israel had focused him with a smear marketing campaign.
Irene Khan, the U.N. Particular Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 mentioned that the killings had been “part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability.”
The Committee to Shield Journalists mentioned on Sunday that it was appalled by the strike.
“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” Sara Qudah, the group’s regional director, mentioned in a press release.
