Al Jazeera condemns killing of journalist in Israeli strike in Gaza

Al Jazeera has condemned the killing of one of its Palestinian journalists in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip, describing it as a "deliberate and targeted crime".

Mohammed Wishah, a correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, and one other person were killed in a drone strike on a vehicle in Gaza City on Wednesday, the Qatar-based network and local health officials said.

The Israeli military alleged that Wishah was a "Hamas terrorist" and said it carried out the strike because he posed a threat to its forces in the area.

There was no immediate response from Al Jazeera, but both the network and Hamas have previously denied that Wishah was affiliated with the armed group.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also said it condemned the killing of Wishah "in the strongest possible terms".

He is the 11th Al Jazeera journalist to be killed since the start of the war in Gaza, where a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place for six months.

Witnesses said Wishah was travelling in a vehicle with another Palestinian along the coastal road west of Gaza City when it was hit by a missile fired by an Israeli drone.

Videos posted online in the aftermath showed the vehicle engulfed in flames.

On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that its troops targeted Wishah and accused him of being "a key terrorist in Hamas' rocket and weapons production headquarters" who "operated under the guise of an Al Jazeera journalist". It said he was "actively involved in planning attacks against IDF troops, and posed a concrete threat to forces in the area".

As evidence, it cited a February 2024 post from the IDF's Arabic spokesman, which included photos that he said showed Wishah operating weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He said the photos were found on a computer that troops confiscated in Gaza.

At the time, Al Jazeera and Hamas denied Wishah had any affiliation with the group.

A statement issued by Al Jazeera on Wednesday said it "strongly condemns the heinous crime of targeting and killing" its correspondent.

"This constitutes a new and flagrant violation of all international laws and norms, and reflects a continued systematic policy of targeting journalists and silencing the voice of truth," it added.

Al Jazeera also reaffirmed that it would pursue "all necessary legal action to prosecute those responsible for the killing of its correspondents and staff in Gaza, and to seek justice for them and for all fallen journalists".

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Wishah was one of "more than 220 journalists killed in two and a half years by the Israeli forces in Gaza, at least 70 of whom were killed in the context of performing their duties," according to AFP news agency.

International news outlets rely on local reporters within Gaza, as Israel does not allow foreign media, including BBC News, to send journalists into the territory.

The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 72,310 people have been killed, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

The CPJ also said on Wednesday that two other journalists had been killed in separate Israeli strikes in Lebanon this week - Ghada Dayekh, a presenter with privately-owned radio station Sawt al-Farah, and Suzan Khalil, a reporter and presenter on Al-Manar TV, which is affiliated with the armed group Hezbollah.

Dayekh was killed on Tuesday when her apartment building in the southern city of Tyre was struck, completely destroying it, according to Sawt al-Farah's director.

Khalil was killed in a strike in the northern village of Kfoun on Wednesday, Lebanese media cited Hezbollah's media office as saying.

The CPJ said a total of 260 journalists had been killed across the Middle East since the start of the Gaza conflict. At least seven of them have been killed in Lebanon, where Israeli forces are fighting Hezbollah, since the start of the US and Israel's war with Iran on 28 February.

"Journalists are being killed at a pace and scale that should shock the conscience of the world. These are not isolated tragedies; they reflect a systematic failure to uphold the most basic protections owed to civilian journalists under international law," said the CPJ's regional director, Sara Qudah, in a statement.

"CPJ has consistently warned that without accountability, these attacks will continue to escalate, emboldening those who seek to silence independent reporting through violence."