The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the horrific crime committed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), who assassinated six journalists, including Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqea, in an airstrike targeting a journalists’ tent inside al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City last night. PCHR affirms that the ongoing and escalating targeting and killing of journalists for over 22 months is part of the genocide unfolding the Gaza Strip. It also unequivocally proves that these assassination crimes intend to silence those who expose Israeli atrocities against Palestinian civilians, including ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the starvation of nearly two million Palestinians, preventing them from conveying the truth to the world in sound and image. This latest crime also appears to be a calculated attempt to intimidate the remaining journalists and obstruct media coverage, in what may be a prelude to a large-scale military operation recently approved by the Israeli government, aimed at forcibly displacing nearly one million Palestinians from Gaza City and northern Gaza to the south.
According to information collected by PCHR’s field staff, at approximately 23:20 on Saturday, 10 August 2025, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a journalists’ tent set up in front of the emergency department at al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City. The strike killed seven people, including six journalists. Among them were five members of Al Jazeera’s staff: correspondents Anas Jamal Mahmoud al-Sharif (29) and Mohammed Mohammed Qasem Qreiqea (34), and cameramen Ibrahim ‘Abed al-Kareem Mohammed Daher (26), Mo’min Ziyad Mohammed ‘Eliwa (24), and Mohammed Riyad ‘Abdullah Nofal (30). Also killed was journalist Mohammed ‘Abed al-Majeed Hasan al-Khaldi (39), who worked for the Sahaat media platform, in addition to Saber Nayif Sa’d Jundiya (24), a civilian who happened to be at the scene when the attack occurred.
Following the crime, the IOF claimed responsibility and confirmed in a statement that they targeted journalist Anas al-Sharif, accusing him of serving as “the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas and had advanced rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and IDF troops.”
The killing of journalist al-Sharif and his colleagues follows nearly two years of continuous incitement by the Israeli military and political leadership, and media against Palestinian journalists, accusing them of being militants disguised as journalists.1 Al-Sharif, in particular, was a primary target of this campaign. During this period, he faced direct threats of assassination due to his coverage of the famine crisis in Gaza. Both al-Sharif and Qreiqea were among the very few journalists who remained in Gaza City and northern Gaza, armed only with their cameras and microphones, documenting the IOF’s crimes over the past two years, including killings, destruction, and forced displacement. In recent months, they exposed the starvation policy implemented by the IOF over the past five months and its devastating impact on Palestinians by publishing documented reports that featured testimonies and images of starving Gazans, dozens of whom have died as a result of this policy.
With the killing of these six journalists, the number of journalists killed by the IOF since 7 October 2023 has risen to 237, including 14 women, according to Gaza Government Media Office. Of those killed, 50 journalists lost their lives while carrying out their professional duties, according to Reporters Without Borders. Dozens of others were killed in targeted attacks on their homes. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has documented the bombing of 152 houses belonging to journalists, resulting in the killing of 665 of their family members and relatives. Other journalists have been killed in indiscriminate bombardments carried out as part of the ongoing genocide. Since the start of the aggression, 415 journalists have also been injured under various circumstances. Furthermore, a large number of social media activists have been deliberately targeted by the IOF, which has systematically incited against them and threatened to kill them if they refuse to remain silent.
PCHR asserts that the targeting of journalists intends to isolate the victim and prevent the documentation of Israel’s genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. Thus, PCHR calls on the international community to openly condemn the targeting of journalists, to exert pressure on Israel, the occupying power, to immediately stop these attacks, and to urgently provide international protection for civilians, including journalists, in the Gaza Strip.
PCHR emphasizes that the deliberate and systematic killing of journalists is part of the ongoing crime of genocide in Gaza and constitutes a war crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute. It also constitutes arbitrary deprivation of life under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the perpetrators must be held accountable.
PCHR stresses that the continued failure of the international justice system to hold Israeli leaders accountable for their crimes has encouraged them to commit further violations and crimes against journalists and their families, carried out without deterrence.
In light of the above, PCHR calls on the international community to pressure Israel to immediately stop targeting journalists and to take immediate action to provide international protection for civilians, including journalists, in the Gaza Strip. PCHR also urges the international community to exert pressure on Israel to stop its crimes, comply with the rules of international law, and provide protection for civilians.
PCHR calls upon the international journalists’ organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists, to act urgently to push towards holding Israel accountable for the killing and targeting of journalists in Palestine, particularly in the Gaza Strip.
PCHR also calls on the ICC Prosecutor to expedite the issuance of tangible measures to accomplish the investigation into the situation of the State of Palestine, including killings of journalists who pay their lives as a cost for exposing the truth especially that the victims in Palestine have long awaited justice and accountability.
PCHR also urges the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression to scale up efforts to protect the right to freedom of opinion and expression and investigate crimes committed by IOF against journalists and media outlets in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).
