Press groups denounce Israeli strike on Al Jazeera workers
Press rights groups on August 11th denounced an Israeli targeted strike that killed an Al Jazeera news team in Gaza, according to The New Arab via AFP.
The internationally condemned strike by Israel’s military killed five Al Jazeera journalists, including Anas Al-Sharif, a well-recognised Al Jazeera correspondent and journalist aged 28, and four of his colleagues in a tent near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.Â
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has already accused Israeli prime Minister Netanyahu, of war crimes. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) later admitted that the strike was a deliberate assassination. They released a document alleging to show the date of Sharif’s recruitment into Hamas in 2013, along with the name of his military unit and rank.Â
According to local journalists, Sharif had worked at the start of his career with a Gaza government communication department, helping publicise events. The Israeli military also accused Sharif of heading a Hamas “terrorist cell”.Â
Media rights groups have spoken out against the Israeli attack on journalists, which the UN human rights agency denounced as a “grave breach of international humanitarian law”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, called for his protection back in July 2025. It has accused Israel of a “pattern” of labelling journalists as militants “without providing credible evidence”, and said its military had levelled similar allegations against media workers in Gaza, such as Al Jazeera workers.
The CPJ’s chief executive, Jodie Ginsberg, said: “International law is clear that active combatants are the only justified targets in a war setting,” adding that unless Israel “can demonstrate that Anas al-Sharif was still an active combatant, then there is no justification for his killing.”Â
Reporters without borders has said that almost 200 journalists have been killed in the conflict, which was prompted by the Hamas-led attack of October 2023 on Israel.
Israel’s conflict in Gaza was previously labelled by Watson Institute’s Cost of War project at Brown University, as “simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters”. It claims that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in the US Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the wars in Indochina, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.Â
 The New Arab via AFP, Maghrebi.org
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