United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the killing of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza in an Israeli air strike, his spokesperson said on Monday.
"The secretary-general calls for an independent and impartial investigation into these latest killings," said UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
"At least 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Journalists and media workers must be respected, they must be protected and they must be allowed to carry out their work freely, free from fear and free from harassment."
Israel’s military targeted and killed an Al Jazeera correspondent and others with an airstrike late Sunday in Gaza, after press advocates said an Israeli "smear campaign" stepped up when Anas al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.
Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths of al-Sharif and colleagues, which the Committee to Protect Journalists and others described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.
The military has previously said it targeted individuals it described as Hamas fighters posing as reporters. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.
Officials at Shifa Hospital said those killed while sheltering outside Gaza City’s largest hospital complex also included Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qreiqeh, plus four other journalists and two other people. Five of the six slain journalists were Al Jazeera staffers. The strike damaged the entrance to the complex’s emergency building.
The airstrike occurred hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended a planned military offensive into some of Gaza’s most populated areas, including Gaza City, and said he directed the military to "bring in more foreign journalists" to Gaza.
The strike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing.
Al Jazeera calls strike an ‘assassination’
Condemnation has poured in from the UN human rights office, the Foreign Press Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International, among others.
Al Jazeera called the strike a "targeted assassination" and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif's death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.
"Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people," the Qatari network said in a statement.
Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.
Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year, ordering them closed.
The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.
Like al-Sharif, Shabat was among the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.
"Only a journalist that is a Hamas fighter or that is, at the time of attack, directly participating in hostilities can be intentionally targeted. Alerting the world to the starvation of civilians, reporting on Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, even disseminating pro-Hamas propaganda, none of this would count as direct participation in hostilities," said Janina Dill, a professor of global security at the University of Oxford. She added that evidence is mounting that Israel considers anyone who it believes is a Hamas member to be a legitimate target.
"I do not consider this a reasonable interpretation of international humanitarian law," Dill said.
The Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday that at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began. Sunday’s strike brings the total number of Al Jazeera staff journalists killed during the war to 11, not including 8 freelancers, according to CPJ data.
Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, on July 31 said that the killings were "part of a deliberate strategy of Israel to suppress the truth, obstruct the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future accountability."
Funeral-goers call to protect journalists
In a social media post that Al Jazeera said was written to be posted in case of his death, al-Sharif bemoaned the devastation and destruction that war had wrought and bid farewell to his wife, son and daughter.
"I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification," the 28-year-old wrote.
Hundreds of people, including many journalists, gathered Monday to mourn al-Sharif, Qreiqeh and their colleagues. The bodies lay wrapped in white sheets at the Shifa Hospital complex.
Ahed Ferwana of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said reporters were being deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.
Al-Sharif began reporting for Al Jazeera a few days after war broke out. He was known for reporting on Israel’s bombardment in northern Gaza, and later for the starvation gripping much of the territory’s population.
In a July broadcast, al-Sharif cried on air as a woman behind him collapsed from hunger.
"I am talking about slow death of those people," he said at the time.
Qreiqeh, a 33-year-old Gaza City native, is survived by two children.
Both journalists were separated from their families for months earlier in the war. When they managed to reunite during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children appeared unable to recognize them, according to video footage they posted at the time.
"Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues have been the eyes and voices of Gaza. Starved and exhausted, they continued to bravely report from the frontlines, despite death threats and immense grief," Amnesty International said in a statement Monday, adding that there must be an independent, impartial investigation into the killings of Palestinian journalists.
