In Pics: Journalists targeted in Israeli strikes on Gaza Strip

During their coverage of the Israeli aggression on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, eight Palestinian journalists were killed and 10 others were injured in the ongoing Israeli shelling of the Strip, announced the Monitoring and Follow-up Unit of Gaza’s media office in a statement on Tuesday.

The killed journalists are Ibrahim Lafi, Moahmed Jarghoun, Moahmed Al-Salhi, Asaad Shamlakh, Saeed Al-Taweel, Mohamed Sobh Abu Rizk, and Hisham Al-Nawajeha. 

In addition, female journalist Salam Mima was killed with her husband and her three children (Hadi, Ali, and Sham) in an Israeli bombing on their house in the Jabalia camp on Tuesday.

In the presence of dozens of journalists and photojournalists in the Gaza Strip, the funerals of Sobh and Al-Taweel were held after they were killed on Tuesday morning.

The media office added that contact with two other journalists, Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdel-Wahed, was broken off. Meanwhile, the homes of two journalists, Rami Al-Sharafi and Basil Khair Al-Din, were completely demolished. Other homes of dozens of journalists were partially damaged as well.

Dozens of media offices and institutions were also severely destroyed partially and completely by the Israeli shelling, the statement said, noting that more than 40 media headquarters were damaged.

“We emphasize that our journalists will continue their professional role and national duty to cover the events of the aggression and to exert more efforts to expose the crimes of the occupation and expose the falsity of its claims,” the statement read, calling for international investigations into the killing of journalists who were on their duty during the war.

“We call on the international institutions concerned with freedom of media to remove the occupation’s (Israel’s) membership from them,” the statement said.

The violence escalated between the Palestinians and Israelis on October 7, when Palestinian fighters from Hamas launched an unprecedented military operation, called Tufan Al-Aqsa (The Flood of Al-Aqsa), against Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied settlements near the Gaza Strip. The military operation is an attempt to end the Israeli violations against Palestinians, who have been deprived of their rights to their lands, and to put an end to the Israeli siege against the Gaza residents and violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In response, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since then, killing 788 people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and injuring 4,100 others. Meanwhile, the escalation of the violence resulted in the killing of 900 Israelis and 2,500 others injured.