Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi were killed on Wednesday as an Israeli air strike hit their car in the Shati refugee camp on Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reported. The media outlet called it a “targeted assassination”.
The two journalists, 26 years of age, were wearing media vests and “identifying signs on their car” on their way to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital when they were killed. They had reportedly contacted their news desk about 15 minutes before the strike, informing the outlet of a “strike on a house” close to where they were reporting.
The Al Jazeera report said the two journalists were in the area to report from near the Gaza house of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was assassinated in the early hours of Wednesday in Iran’s Tehran.
Al Jazeera said the killing of Ismail and Rafi was a “targeted assassination” by Israeli forces and that they would “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. This latest attack on Al Jazeera journalists is part of a systematic targeting campaign against the network’s journalists and their families since October 2023”.
Anas al-Sharif, reporting from the Gaza hospital where the two bodies were kept, said that “Ismail was conveying the suffering of the displaced Palestinians” and “the feeling, no words can describe what happened.”
Al Jazeera’s @Hind_Gaza breaks down as she reports on the killing of her colleagues Ismail al Ghoul and Rami al Rifee in an Israeli strike
— Baba Umar (@BabaUmarr) July 31, 2024
Palestinian officials say Israel has killed some 165 Palestinian journalists since October last year
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Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera Arabic managing editor, said the two journalists were “courageously covering the events in northern Gaza” and Ismail “relentlessly covered the events and delivered the reality of Gaza to the world through Al Jazeera”.
Over 40,000 people have been killed in the Israel-Hamas violence since October last year. As per the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 111 journalists have also died.
Newslaundry had earlier reported that many of the journalists killed in the conflict were at work, trying to make audiences across the world aware of the horrors of war. From a mother of three to a reporter known for their “empathy”, these journalists also lived a life off the camera. Read about it here.
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