Five journalists have been killed in an overnight Israeli strike that hit their vehicle in Gaza, a hospital and their news outlet said in a statement on Thursday.
The vehicle, belonging to Al-Quds Today Television, was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital when it was hit, according to the hospital. The Gaza-based television channel is affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.
Ayman Al-Jadi, Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Mohammed Al-Lada’a, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Ali, and Fadi Hassouna were all sleeping in the vehicle when the strike hit, other journalists at the scene said.
Footage of the aftermath seen by CNN shows the vehicle in flames with the words “TV” and “PRESS” in large letters visible on the back doors. Another video seen by CNN shows it completely engulfed by flames.
Al-Quds Today Television condemned the attack and said the five were killed “while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty.”
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed the strike, and said that a list discovered by its soldiers in Gaza “explicitly identified” four of the men killed as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) members. The IDF published what it said was a copy of the list, edited to translate the names and details of the men.
“Intelligence from multiple sources confirmed that these individuals were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists. One source was a list of Islamic Jihad operatives discovered by the IDF during operations in the Gaza Strip. This list explicitly identified four of the eliminated individuals as members of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization,” the IDF said.
The IDF said four of the men had been involved in “combat propaganda,” describing one of them also as a former Islamic Jihad naval operative and another as a PIJ operations operative, and said the fifth was head of security for PIJ in Nuseirat.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a US-based non-profit group, has said at least 141 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since October 7th last year, “making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.”
Of those killed, 133 were Palestinians in Gaza, who “face particularly high risks as they try to cover the conflict.”
Earlier this month, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed an Al Jazeera photojournalist, one year to the day after an attack killed one of his colleagues.
Ahmad Al-Louh, 39, and four other people were killed by the strike that targeted an office of the Civil Defense service in central Gaza’s Nuseirat Camp area, according to Al-Awda Hospital, which treated the casualties.
Al Jazeera condemned the attack, saying Al-Louh was “brutally killed” while covering a Civil Defense attempt to rescue a family that had been severely injured in an earlier bombing.
Mohammad Al Sawalhi, a stringer for CNN in Gaza, said Al-Louh was well known among journalists in Gaza and was often embedded with the Civil Defense in his capacity as a journalist, covering rescue missions.
The Israeli military confirmed it targeted the Civil Defense offices in a “precise strike,” claiming the site was being used as a “command-and-control center” by Hamas and alleging that Al-Louh was a “terrorist” who had previously served with Islamic Jihad. The IDF did not provide any proof for its allegations.
Clarification: This article has been updated to include the information the IDF provided in support of its claims about who was killed in the strike.
