UN says ‘very concerned’ as ruthless Israel kills 110 journalists in Gaza

News Network
January 9, 2024

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The United Nations has sounded a serious alarm about the high number of journalists killed in the Gaza Strip amid the Israeli regime's genocidal war on the besieged Palestinian territory.

The warning came on Monday, just one day after two journalists died in an Israeli strike on their car in the southern part of Gaza.

The journalists, who have been identified as Hamza Wael al-Dahdouh, the son of al-Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, and Mustafa Thuraya, were killed in the city of Khan Yunis on Sunday.

Hamza and a group of journalists were en route to the Moraj area northeast of the city of Rafah, which was designated a "humanitarian zone" by the Israeli army but has experienced recent bombings.

"Very concerned by high death toll of media workers in Gaza," the UN rights office said in a post on X social media platform.

It added that killings of all journalists in Gaza “must be thoroughly, independently investigated to ensure strict compliance with international law, and violations prosecuted."

"…what we know is that many of them (journalists) have died and we have repeatedly called for their profession to be respected, so that they are able to do it freely and in safety," Florencia Soto Nino, a deputy spokeswoman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Monday.

A US-based rights advocacy organization said in late December 2023 that the Israeli aggression on Gaza is the most dangerous situation for journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the first 10 weeks of the regime’s genocide were the deadliest recorded ever for journalists, with the most journalists killed in a single year in one location.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also filed its second complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli war crimes against Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
The Paris-based press freedom group filed the lawsuit in late December, asking the court in The Hague to investigate the deaths of seven Palestinian journalists who were killed in Gaza from October 22 to December 15.

The group said in a statement that according to the information it collected, “these journalists may have been deliberately targeted as journalists.”

According to the latest figures, nearly 110 journalists have lost their lives in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli regime launched its military aggression against the territory on October 7.

The regime's genocide in Gaza has so far killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, while leaving nearly 59,000 injured. 

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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