Monday , 11 August 2025
On Sunday, August 10, 2024, four Al Jazeera staff — correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal — and two freelancers, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi were killed and two others were injured by a targeted strike on a tent used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Aliwa was working as an assistant camera operator and logistics provider for Al Jazeera at the time of his death and was inside the Al Jazeera tent when it was struck, Mahmoud Elewa, the journalist’s brother, told CPJ. Al-Khaldi, who contributed to the Palestinian NGO Filastiniyat and the local online platform Sahat, was inside a nearby tent.
In a statement announcing the killing of al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops.”
Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof.
Al-Sharif had been one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters in Gaza since October 2023, and one of several journalists whom Israel had previously alleged were members of Hamas, without providing evidence.
In a July 24 video, Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, accused al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war “for the most criminal and offensive channel.”
CPJ called for al-Sharif’s protection in a July statement, in which he told CPJ that “Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction; it is a real-life threat.”
He said, “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world. They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.”
Mohammed Qita, a freelance reporter and camera operator who contributes to Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, told CPJ that he was outside a neighboring tent when the explosion occurred and burned his hand while trying to extinguish the flames on al-Khalid’s body, as well as being struck by shrapnel. Mohamad Subuh, a correspondent for the pro-Fatah broadcaster Al-Kofiya TV, told CPJ that he was injured by shrapnel while inside a nearby tent.
With Sunday’s killing of six journalists, 192 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israeli-Gaza war on October 7, 2023. At least 184 of those journalists were Palestinians killed by Israel.
The August 10 attack raises the number of Al Jazeera staff journalists killed by Israel in Gaza during the war to 10, in addition to nine journalists who freelanced with the media organization, according to CPJ data.