Israel targets, kills Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif
By Sam Metz and Samy Magdy
Jerusalem (AP) – The Israeli army has targeted an Al Jazeera correspondent with an air strike on Sunday, the killing, another journalist from the network and at least six other people, who were all sheltered from the largest hospital complex in Gaza City.
Officials at Shifa Hospital said that people killed included Al Jazeera Anas Al-Sharif and Mohamed Qreiqeh correspondents. The strike also killed four other journalists and two other people, said the administrative director of the hospital, Rami Mohanna, to the Associated Press. The strike also damaged the entrance to the emergency building of the hospital complex.
Israel and officials of the Gaza City hospital confirmed deaths, whom the press defenders described as reprisals against those who document the war in Gaza. The army of Israel described on Sunday in Al-Sharif as the leader of a Hamas cell-an allegation according to which Al Jazeera and Al-Sharif had previously rejected as baseless.
The incident marked the first time during the war that the Israeli army quickly claimed responsibility after a journalist was killed in a strike.
He came less than a year after the Israeli army officials accused Al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a video of July 24, the Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused Al-Sharif of being part of the Hamas military wing.
Al Jazeera calls the strike “assassination”
Al Jazeera described the strike as “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli incentive officials, connecting Al-Sharif’s death to the allegations according to which the network and the correspondent had denied.
“Anas and her colleagues were among the last remaining votes of Gaza, offering the world an underestimated coverage and on the ground of devastating realities endured by his people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.
In addition to the rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media were prohibited from entering Gaza during the war. Al Jazeera is among the few points of sale that still feed a large team of journalists inside the besieged band, telling daily life in the middle of air strikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.
The network underwent heavy losses during the war, including the 27-year correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul and the cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and the freelancers Hosperd Shabat, killed in an Israeli air strike in March.
Like Al-Sharif, Shabat was one of the six that Israel accused of being members of militant groups last October.
Funeral enthusiasts call to protect journalists
Hundreds of people, including many journalists, gathered on Monday to cry Al-Sharif, Qureiqa and their colleagues. The bodies were wrapped in white sheets with the Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Ahed Ferwana Palestinian journalists union said that journalists were deliberately targeted and urged the international community to act.
Al-Sharif reported a bombing nearby a few minutes before his death. In an article on social networks that Al Jazeera said he was written in the event of death, he deplored the devastation and destruction that war had made and farewell to his wife, son and daughter.
“I never hesitated to transmit the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification,” wrote the 28 -year -old.
Journalists are the last to be killed in what observers have called the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times. The committee to protect journalists said on Sunday that at least 186 had been killed in Gaza, and the Watson Institute of Brown University in April said that the war was “quite simply, the worst conflict of journalists”.
Al-Sharif began to make reports for Al Jazeera a few days after the breakup of war. He was known for reporting on the bombing of Israel in northern Gaza, and later for famine by entering a large part of the population of the territory. Qureiqa, originally from Gaza, aged 33, is survived by two children.
The two journalists were separated from their family for months earlier in the war. When they managed to meet during the ceasefire earlier this year, their children are unable to recognize them, according to video sequences they published at the time.
In July, Al-Sharif cried in the air while a woman behind him collapsed from hunger.
“I take the slow death of these people,” he said at the time.
Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers made a descent into the offices in the West Bank occupied last year, ordering them to close.
The death of Al-Sharif comes from weeks after a UN expert and the New York-based committee to protect journalists said that Israel had targeted it with a defamation campaign.
Irene Khan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, said on July 31 that murders were “part of a deliberate strategy from Israel to remove the truth, hinder the documentation of international crimes and bury any possibility of future responsibility.”
The committee to protect journalists said on Sunday that it was dismayed by the strike.
“Israel’s model to label journalists and activists without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intention and respect for press freedom,” Sara Qudah, group’s regional director, in a statement.
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Magdy reported to Cairo.
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This story was corrected to change the name of the second journalist in Qreiqeh.
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