‘I risked everything': remembering six media workers killed by Israel in Gaza
Some were working for well-known international media, others were employed by local news organisations. Several were high-profile veterans, but many were newcomers to the profession.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent non-profit organisation based in the US that promotes press freedom worldwide, says at least 186 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992. Most have been Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel's continuing offensive. Others put the toll higher.
The CPJ accuses Israel of directly targeting and killing 20 journalists and media workers. Any deliberate attack on a civilian could constitute a war crime, experts say. Israel, which has refused to let international media into Gaza, denies the accusation.
Anas al-Sharif was killed in a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night. Seven people were killed in the attack, including another Al Jazeera correspondent, Mohammed Qreiqeh and the camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.
Sharif, 28, is one of the most high-profile media casualties of the war in Gaza so far, reaching huge audiences with his reports for Al Jazeera and with more than 500,000 followers on X. His father was killed by an Israeli strike on the family home in that Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza City in December 2023. Sharif said at the time that he would continue to report and refused to leave northern Gaza.
In a July broadcast he cried on air as woman behind him collapsed from hunger. 'I am taking about slow death of those people,' he said.
His final post on X read: 'Relentless bombardment … For two hours, the Israeli aggression has intensified on Gaza City.' He leaves a wife and two young children.
The Israeli military, citing 'intelligence and documents from Gaza, including rosters, terrorist training lists and salary records', said Sharif was 'a Hamas operative integrated into Al Jazeera'.
Ismail Abu Hatab, 32, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on al-Baqa cafe on the seashore in Gaza City in June, along with 33 other people.
The photographer and film-maker, a graduate of Gaza's University College of Applied Sciences, had sustained serious injuries to his leg in a November 2024 attack on his office in the al-Ghifari tower in Gaza City but had made a slow, painful recovery.
He had worked for numerous international media organisations, exhibited in the US and Spain, and launched a platform to bring art by Palestinians in Gaza to an international audience. He had also curated an exhibition in Los Angeles which portrayed life in Gaza during the war.
'I have seen so much death. The mass graves and the final farewells, these things affect me deeply,' he told an Indian reporter in October 2024. 'How can one group of people decide the fate of another and kill them in this way?' .
The Israeli military said the strike on the cafe had targeted a meeting of Hamas commanders.
Fatma Hassouna, 25, a photographer and film-maker, was killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit her home in northern Gaza in April, just months before her wedding. Six members of her family, including her pregnant sister, were also killed.
Hassouna, who graduated shortly before the war with a degree in multimedia, had spent 18 months documenting airstrikes, the endless displacement and the killing of 11 family members. Her work was published by the Guardian and other international outlets, and received much attention on social media.
'If I die, I want a loud death,' she had written. 'I don't want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.'
A film made with Hassouna was accepted for screening by the Cannes film festival the day before she was killed.
The Israeli military said its attack had targeted a Hamas member involved in attacks on its soldiers and civilians.
Hossam Shabat, 23, was killed in March, shortly after Israel definitively ended a two-month ceasefire with a wave of airstrikes. A correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, he died in an airstrike on his car in the ruined northern town of Beit Lahiya as he was conducting interviews. He was also a contributor to the US-based Drop Site News.
Friends described an enthusiastic and brave reporter, who 'touched people's pain with his camera and his voice'. The Israeli military said it had 'eliminated [a] terrorist' who had been a Hamas sniper, and cited documents soldiers had found in Gaza as evidence for the accusation.
Hours after he was killed, Shabat's team posted a message on X that he had written to be published in the event of his death.
'I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute … Each day was a battle for survival,' he wrote. 'I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest – something I haven't known in the past 18 months.'
Hassan Aslih, 37, was being treated for injuries from a previous Israeli strike when he was killed in drone attack on the emergency department of Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in May.
Israel has accused the photographer, who had a vast following on social media, of taking part in the 7 October 2023 attack. Aslih documented the attack and followed fighters into Israel, taking photographs that were published worldwide. He denied Israel's allegations.
Hamza al-Dahdouh, 27, a journalist for Al Jazeera, was killed along with a freelance cameraman working for Agence France-Presse in an Israeli drone strike on their car in southern Gaza in January 2024.
The eldest son of the well-known Al Jazeera bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, his mother, brother, sister and nephew had been killed in an Israeli airstrike just weeks before. His father described his son as 'kind, generous, ambitious'. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who was in Doha at the time, called the death an 'unimaginable loss'.
The Israeli military claimed Dahdouh had been targeted 'as a terrorist operating an aircraft that posed a threat to IDF troops', a reference to a small drone the reporter used to gather footage.
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