On Sunday (Aug. 10), five journalists with Al Jazeera were killed after an Israeli airstrike near the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Among them was the prominent frontline correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who along with Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda won the Human Rights Defender Award from Amnesty International last December.
Spokespeople for the Israeli military stated that they targeted al-Sharif specifically, alleging that he “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas” and “was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops.” According to Reuters, the Israeli Defense Forces claimed they had documents proving the links but did not disclose them after inquires from the press.
Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government, vehemently denied those assertions, as did al-Sharif in the past. “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,” the network said in a statement, calling for the international community to “take decisive measures to halt this ongoing genocide and end the deliberate targeting of journalists.”
Hours before, al-Sharif had called for followers in post on X, formerly Twitter, to continue to speak out against the ongoing military strikes that have severely impacted the Palestinian people in the Gaza region. “If this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop,” he wrote.
The other Al Jazeera colleagues killed in the strike include Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa. Israel has not allowed journalists from other news outlets into the Gaza region to freely report activities there since the beginning of the war in 2023. Al Jazeera’s offices in Gaza were shut down by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024. The Committee to Protect Journalists have been consistently critical of Israel, calling out the nation’s allegations against al-Sharif. The CPJ notes that 186 journalists have been killed since Israel’s military operations against the Hamas organization.
