Israel assassinates prominent Al Jazeera journalists and crew members
Israeli forces assassinated two of Gaza's leading journalists and their colleagues late on Sunday, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected international condemnation over his plan to occupy the Palestinian enclave.
The Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that its correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, along with three other colleagues, were deliberately killed when Israeli forces struck their tent outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Qreiqeh contributed to several publications, including Middle East Eye, before he began working at Al Jazeera.
Sharif, a 28-year-old father of two, had been stationed outside the hospital's main gate along with cameramen and photojournalists Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Mosaab Al Sharif when their tent was attacked.
Two other unnamed Palestinians were also killed in the attack.
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Shortly before his killing, Sharif had posted a video on X showing what he called Israel's "intense" missile strikes on the eastern and southern parts of Gaza City. His final video captured the deafening booms of the attacks near to where he was.
Later, the Israeli military claimed, without providing any evidence, that it killed Sharif because he "served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation."
Israel has confirmed responsibility for the assassination of Al Jazeera correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqa and their crew in the journalists’ tent at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Both reporters were widely recognised for their extensive coverage of Israeli attacks pic.twitter.com/4Ex8q5cjr8
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 10, 2025
Since Israel launched its war on the enclave in October 2023, it has routinely accused Palestinian journalists in Gaza of being Hamas members as part of what rights groups say is an effort to discredit their reporting of Israeli abuses.
In a statement, Al Jazeera called Sharif "one of Gaza's bravest journalists" and said the attack was "a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza."
"Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people," it said.
"While international media was barred from entering, Al Jazeera journalists remained within besieged Gaza, experiencing the hunger and suffering they documented through their lenses. Through continuous, courageous live coverage, they have delivered searing eyewitness accounts of the horrors unleashed over 22 months of relentless bombing and destruction," it added.
Another Al Jazeera journalist in Gaza, Hani Mahmoud, referred to the assassination as "perhaps the hardest thing I'm reporting about the past 22 months."
"I'm not far from al-Shifa hospital, just one block away, and I could hear the massive explosion that took place in the past half an hour or so, near al-Shifa hospital.
"I could see it when it lit up the sky and, within moments, the news circulated that it was the journalist camp at the main gate of the al-Shifa hospital," he added.
David Hearst, editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, said: Mohammed Qreiqeh lived and died for the truth. He and his colleagues were assassinated because Israel is about to launch a murderous attack on Gaza City.
But Mohammed's death will not stop Middle East Eye reporting what is happening in Gaza 24 hours a day. The truth will haunt Israeli leaders to their graves.
'Allah bear witness against those who stayed silent'
Last month, Israeli army spokesperson Avichai Adraee shared a video threatening Sharif, a father of two, on X, in a message widely condemned for openly targeting a journalist.
In July, Sharif told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he lived with the "feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment."
Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of the CPJ told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Sharif's killing fit a longstanding Israeli pattern of targeting journalists.
"This is not just about Anas al-Sharif, it is part of a decades-long practice in which Israel kills journalists," she said.
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," he added.
Sharif's assassination comes more than a year after Israel bombed his family home in a refugee camp and killed his 65-year-old father.
The killing of the five media workers comes days after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan to occupy the Gaza Strip. The operation aims to seize Gaza City and forcibly clear its nearly one million Palestinian residents.
While Israel officially called this a "takeover," Israeli media reported the term "occupy" was avoided to dodge legal responsibilities under international law.
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