On average, 13 reporters and media workers have been killed every week in the bombardment
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more journalists than both world wars, the Vietnam War, the American Civil War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined, according to a US-based think tank report published on April 1.
The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs said the war on Gaza, fully backed and funded by US is the deadliest for media workers ever recorded. Israeli aggression and attacks have killed 232 journalists since the October 2023.
That brings the number to an average of 13 reporters killed per week.
Since the report’s publication, at least two more journalists have been killed. They are Yousef al-Faqawi, a reporter for Palestine Today TV station, who was killed on Monday, and Islam Maqdad, a female Palestinian journalist, who was killed Sunday alongside her husband and their child.
Israel struck media tents outside two major hospitals in the Gaza Strip overnight – Al Nassr Hospital in Khan Younis and Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah –killing at least two people, including Faqawi, and wounding nine others, including six reporters, medics said on Monday.
In a disturbing footage from the Israeli strike on Al Nassr hospital being widely circulated on the internet, a journalist for Palestine Today who reports identify as Ahmed Mansour, can be seen being burned alive as Palestinians and rescue workers desperately try to save him.
“Colleague Ahmed Mansour was burned by [Israeli] missiles and is still in intensive care, suffering from severe burns as a result of the targeting of the tent where he is sitting in the journalists’ camp at Nasser Hospital,” Wael Abo Omar, a Palestinian journalist in the Gaza Strip, said on X.
Mansour “needs a miracle” to recover from the severe burns, said Mahmoud Bassam, a photojournalist based in Gaza on X.
Fifteen others were killed in separate strikes across the territory, according to the hospitals.
Israel has raided hospitals on several occasions, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes, allegations denied by hospital staff.
The Israeli military said it struck a member of Palestinian resistance group without providing further information. The military claims it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths saying the group is deeply embedded in residential areas.
Most reporters harmed or killed, as is the case in Gaza, are local journalists, according to the think-tank, which cautioned that killing journalists “impairs news coverage” and facilitates the creation of what it called “news graveyards.’”
“Not only do local reporters face great risk, standing alone in the face of extraordinary violence; this also impairs news coverage and, as a result, the worldwide information ecosystem,” the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs said.
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