Doha (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Qatar’s Prime Minister criticised Israel on Monday for slaying journalists working for Al Jazeera in the Gaza Strip, calling the killings “crimes beyond imagination.”
A well-known Al Jazeera journalist, who had previously received threats from Israel, was killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike. Anas al-Sharif, one of Al Jazeera’s most prominent figures in Gaza, was killed on Sunday night while inside a journalist’s tent outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
“The deliberate targeting of journalists by Israel in the Gaza Strip reveals how these crimes are beyond imagination… May God have mercy on journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, and their colleagues,”
Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani stated in a post on X.
As noted by the Qatar-based news organization, the attack left at least seven people dead, among them al-Sharif, Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa.
How does Israel justify targeting prominent Al Jazeera reporters?
The Israel Defense Force acknowledged the strike, alleging that the reporter had
“served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas organization and was responsible for promoting rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF forces.”
In October, Israel’s military allegedly identified al-Sharif as one of six Gaza journalists accused of being members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing documents that purportedly listed individuals who completed training courses and received salaries.
Are journalists in Gaza increasingly becoming IDF targets?
During the violence in Gaza, Israeli attacks have taken the lives of several journalists. An April 2024 report stated that the ongoing Gaza-Israel war resulted in the deaths of more than 230 journalists and was therefore the deadliest war in history for journalistic professionals. Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh was also killed, as he was struck by a missile that hit the car he was in southern Gaza in January 2024.
The most notable of the journalists killed was Shireen Abu Akleh, an experienced Palestinian-American journalist who had worked for Al Jazeera for 25 years. She was shot and killed on May 11, 2022, while covering an IDF raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied area of the West Bank. There have been reports of multiple members of the wider Al Jazeera family of journalists having also been killed as a result of Israeli military operations over time.
