GAZA – Five journalists from Al Jazeera news were among seven people killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City late on Sunday night, the network said.
The victims include prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif – who has extensively covered the war from inside Gaza. The Israeli military accuses him of leading a Hamas cell, which Al-Sharif had previously denied.
Mohammed Qreiqeh, another Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, and photojournalists Ibrahim Al Thaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa were in a tent for journalists at the hospital’s main gate when it was struck killing them, Al Jazeera said.
“The order to kill Anas Al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, along with his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence voices ahead of the occupation of Gaza,” the network said in a statement after the attack.
In the minutes before he was killed, Al-Sharif said on social media,
“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.”
Al-Sharif was in a tent with other journalists near the entrance to the Al-Shifa Hospital when he was killed, according to hospital director Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, who spoke to US news outlet CNN.
Abu Salmiya added that the tent was marked with a ‘Press’ sign.