Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza City have attended the funeral of five Al Jazeera journalists killed in an Israeli air strike outside al-Shifa Hospital.
Large crowds joined the funeral procession, carrying the journalists’ bodies from al-Shifa Hospital to Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in central Gaza.
Hundreds of mourners carried the body of the prominent Al Jazeera journalist, Anas al-Sharif through the streets of Gaza City on Monday, a day after he and four colleagues were killed in an Israeli airstrike, prompting condemnation from across the world.
Sharif, one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night.
Seven people in total were killed in the attack, including the Al Jazeera correspondent, Mohammed Qreiqeh and the camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa. Freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khaldi was also among the dead. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said three more journalists were wounded.
The Israel Defense Forces admitted carrying out the attack, claiming that Anas al-Sharif was the leader of a Hamas cell – an allegation that Al Jazeera and Sharif had previously dismissed as baseless.
The IDF posted on X what it claimed were documents showing Sharif’s connections to Hamas. IDF did not disclose the documents or provide factual evidence to back them up.
It was the first time during the war that Israel’s military has swiftly claimed responsibility after a journalist was killed in a strike.
Sara Qudah, the Middle East and north Africa Director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said, “Israel’s pattern of labelling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom.”
Israel’s Killing Of Journalists Decried
Reporters Without Borders condemned the “acknowledged murder by the Israeli army” of Sharif in Gaza, and called on the international community to intervene.
Al-Jazeera Media Network condemned the “targeted assassination” by Israeli forces, accusing the military of deliberately striking the journalists’ position. “The Israeli military admitted to their crimes,” the network said, describing the attack as “another blatant and premeditated assault on press freedom.”
Calling Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists,” Al Jazeera said that the attack was “a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.”
In a final message, which Al Jazeera said had been written on 6 April and which was posted to Sharif’s X account after his death, the reporter said that he had “lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”
“Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”
Anas al-Sharif
In a statement on X, the UN’s human rights office said, “We condemn the killing by Israeli military of 6 Palestinian journalists by targeting their tent, in grave breach of international humanitarian law.”
“Israel must respect & protect all civilians, including journalists. At least 242 Palestinian journalists were killed in Gaza since 7 Oct 2023. We call for immediate, safe & unhindered access to Gaza for all journalists.”
UN’s human rights office
After the Hamas attacks on October 11 2023, Israel barred international journalists from entering Gaza – marking one of the rare moments that international reporters have been denied access to an active war zone.
Since then, the task of documenting the war has fallen heavily on Palestinian journalists, often at the cost of their own lives – themselves caught in its devastation, displaced multiple times, their homes reduced to rubble, friends and relatives killed, and at times queueing for food at perilous distribution points.
In a report released this year, the Watson School of International and Public Affairs’ costs of war project said that more journalists had been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam war, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined.
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