UN rights office condemns killing of six Palestinian journalists in Gaza as ‘grave breach of international law’
The U.N. human rights office on Monday condemned the killing of six Palestinian journalists in Gaza, saying the actions by the occupation forces represented a “grave breach of international humanitarian law.”
The post on social media platform X was accompanied by a photograph of flattened blue tents next to a bullet-ridden wall in Gaza City.
A prominent Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously been threatened by the occupation forces, was killed along with four colleagues by the occupation’s airstrike on Sunday in an attack condemned by journalists and rights groups.
Anas Al Sharif, 28, was among a group of four Al Jazeera journalists and an assistant who were targeted by a strike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in eastern Gaza City, Gaza officials and Al Jazeera said. An official at the hospital said two other people were killed in the strike.
A sixth journalist, Mohammad Al-Khaldi, a local freelance reporter, was also killed in the airstrike, medics at Al Shifa Hospital said on Monday.
Calling Al Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists,” Al Jazeera said the attack was a “desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.”
The other journalists killed were Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, Al Jazeera said.
“The targeting of journalists and media institutions by the occupation’s warplanes constitutes a full-fledged war crime aimed at silencing the truth and concealing evidence of genocide. It is a prelude to the occupation’s criminal plan to cover up the past massacres that it has carried out and future massacres that it intends to commit in the Gaza Strip,” the Gaza Government Media Office said in a statement.
According to the media office, the number of journalists killed since the start of the Zionist occupation’s genocidal war on Gaza has risen to 237 martyrs.
