At least seven Palestinian journalists have been killed, two have been reported missing, and at least one has been injured since Saturday when Palestinian resistance groups launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel subsequently declared a war on Gaza.
Most of the Palestinian journalists were killed in action by the Israeli Occupation Forces or in the Israeli bombings of the besieged Gaza strip in the last five days. At least 1,055 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 injured in the indiscriminate bombings by Israeli air force inside the densely populated Palestinian territory besieged by Israel since 2006.
One Palestinian journalist, Salam Mema, and her entire family were killed in an Israeli air strike on their home on Tuesday, Palestine Online reported.
A day earlier, three Palestinian journalists, Mohammad Soboh, Saeed al-Taweel, and Hisham Alnwajha, were killed.
Taweel, the editor in chief of Al-Khamsa news website, and the others were killed when they went to record and photograph at one of the buildings that was about to be targeted by Israeli war planes on Tuesday. They were targeted by Israeli bombers despite clearly wearing jackets which identified them as journalists.
Al-Taweel and Soboh were killed immediately. Alnwajha was admitted to a hospital where he died later.
The funeral of Al-Taweel and Soboh was held in Gaza with thousands of people participating.
Journalists in Gaza take part in the funeral of their colleagues Mohammad Soboh and Saeed Al-Taweel, who were brutally killed after being targeted by an Israeli airstrike last night while covering the evacuation of a building threatened by Israeli bombing west of Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/CcL8Uk2hIW
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 10, 2023
Two other journalists, Ibrahim Mohammed Lafi and Mohammad Jarghoun, were shot dead while reporting on the war on Saturday at two different locations inside the Gaza strip.
A freelance journalist, Mohammed el-Salhi, was shot dead in central Gaza strip on Saturday.
According to a statement issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on October 9, at least two other Palestinian journalists, Nidal al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdelwahid, have been missing since Saturday. Both were photographers working with different media organizations.
“We call on all sides to remember that journalists are civilians and should not be targeted,” the CPJ’s statement reads.
Palestinian Press Freedom Group MADA claimed that one journalist, Ibrahim Qanan, was injured during a bombing in Khas Younis. It also reported that the houses of several Palestinian journalists were destroyed in the Israeli air strikes.
Israel has a record of killing Palestinian journalists who are reporting on Israeli atrocities inside the occupied territories. According to a statement issued by the CPJ in May this year, Israel has killed at least 20 journalists in the last 22 years. 18 of these journalists were Palestinians.
Israel has also arrested dozens of Palestinian journalists and charged them with supporting terrorism, a term used inaccurately by Israeli authorities to refer to Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.
Israeli forces rarely face any punitive action in the cases where Palestinian journalists were killed, including in the case Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist working with Al-Jazeera who was killed by Israeli forces while covering a raid in Jenin in May 2022.
