Five Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital on Sunday.
Among the dead are correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, alongside cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.
They were in a tent for journalists at the hospital’s main gate on Sunday evening when it was targeted, Al Jazeera reported.
Shortly before being killed, al-Sharif, 28, wrote on X that Israel had launched intense, concentrated bombardment on the eastern and southern parts of Gaza City.
In a final message, written on April 6, to be published in the event of his death, al-Sharif said he “lived the pain in all its details” and “tasted grief and loss repeatedly”.
“Despite that, I never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or misrepresentation, hoping that God would witness those who remained silent, those who accepted our killing, and those who suffocated our very breaths,” he said.
The reporter also expressed sorrow for having had to leave his wife, Bayan, behind, and for not seeing his son, Salah, and daughter, Sham, grow up.
Shortly after the strike, the IDF confirmed that it had targeted Anas al-Sharif, writing in a Telegram post that he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”. The IDF did not mention any of the other journalists who were killed.
In total, seven people died in the strike, Al Jazeera reports. It initially said that four of its staff had been killed, but revised it to five a few hours later.
In a statement, Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the killings as “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”.
“The order to assassinate Anas Al Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza,” Al Jazeera’s statement read. The broadcaster called on the international community and all relevant organisations to “take decisive measures” against the targeting of journalists.
Its managing editor, Mohamed Moawad, told the BBC that al-Sharif was an accredited journalist who was “the only voice” for the world to know what was happening in the Gaza Strip.
“They were targeted in their tent, they weren’t covering from the front line,” Moawad said of the Israeli strike, says BBC.
“The fact is that the Israeli government is wanting to silence the coverage of any channel of reporting from inside Gaza,” he told The Newsroom programme.
“This is something that I haven’t seen before in modern history.”
In its statement, the IDF accused al-Sharif of posing as a journalist, and being “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops” It said it had previously “disclosed intelligence” confirming his military affiliation, which included “lists of terrorist training courses”.
Last month, the Al Jazeera Media Network—along with the United Nations and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)—issued separate statements warning that al-Sharif’s life was in danger, and calling for his protection.
Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of the CPJ, told the BBC that Israeli authorities have failed to provide evidence to show that the journalists they killed were terrorists.
“This is a pattern we’ve seen from Israel – not just in the current war, but in the decades preceding – in which typically a journalist will be killed by Israeli forces and then Israel will say after the fact that they are a terrorist, but provides very little evidence to back up those claims,” she said.
This is not the first time the IDF has targeted and killed Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza. In August last year, Ismael Al-Ghoul was hit by an air strike as he sat in his car—harrowing video shared on social media showed his decapitated body. Cameraman, Rami al-Rifi, and a boy passing on a bicycle were also killed.
According to the CPJ, 186 journalists have been confirmed killed since the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in October 2023.