Reporter and cameraman said killed en route to film Haniyeh’s home; Hamas claims 165 journalists killed since Oct. 7; IDF says some worked for Hamas and it never targets journalists
Two Al Jazeera journalists were killed on Wednesday in an Israeli strike in Gaza, the Qatar-based channel reported, as war rages in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas.
“Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Refee have been killed in an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip,” the network reported, adding that the strike “targeted a car near the Aidia area, west of Gaza City.”
Anas Al-Sharif, a colleague of the two dead journalists, told Al Jazeera that Ghoul and Rifi were en route to film near the house of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chief killed in Iran earlier on Wednesday in an attack the terror group blamed on Israel.
The IDF had no immediate comment on the strike.
Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office claimed the new deaths raised to 165 the number of Palestinian journalists who were killed by Israeli fire amid the war.
Israel denies targeting journalists and says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians, blaming the high death toll on the fact that Hamas fights in densely populated urban areas and embeds itself deliberately among civilians who are used as human shields. In a statement on December 16, the Israeli army said “the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists.”
Israel has noted those killed were operating within a war zone. It has also said some Palestinian journalists working in Gaza have been active members of terror groups like Hamas.
In a statement, Hamas condemned the killings as a “heinous crime” which it said was “aimed at terrorizing and silencing” Palestinian journalists as they reported “the ongoing genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for nearly 10 months”.
Al Jazeera, which broadcasts in English and Arabic, has been the focus of months of criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.
In early May, the government banned Al Jazeera in Israel, shuttering and raiding its offices, alleging it was actively harming national security. Last month, the Tel Aviv District Court extended the ban on the network.
In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an airstrike in Gaza were terror operatives.
The following month, it accused another journalist with the channel, who was wounded in a separate strike, of being a deputy company commander with Hamas.
Al Jazeera has fiercely denied Israel’s allegations and accused it of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.
Its bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that killed the network’s cameraman.
His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in an October strike in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
His eldest son was the Al Jazeera staff journalist killed in January when a strike targeted a car in Rafah.
As reported by The Times of Israel