posted March 24, 2025 09:58 PM
Separate Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed two media workers, including an Al Jazeera journalist.Hossam Shabat, a journalist who worked for Al Jazeera Mubasher, was killed in northern Gaza on Monday. Witnesses told the network that his car was targeted in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Shabat, 23, had been previously wounded in another Israeli attack “but he insisted on continuing news reporting” in Gaza.
“The Israeli military targeted his vehicle” without giving “any prior warning”, Abu Azzoum said.
The colleagues of Shabat, have shared his final words.
In a post on X, prewritten by Shabat, he wrote, “If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces.”
Shabat wrote that over the last 18 months of war, he has dedicated “every moment” to his people.
“I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.”
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza,” Shabat added. “Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”
Earlier on Monday, an Israeli army attack on Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, also killed journalist Mohammad Mansour, who worked for Palestine Today.
Abu Azzoum said Mansour was killed “in his house … alongside his wife and his son”, in an attack that also came without any prior warning.
‘Targeting journalists a war crime’
The killing of the two journalists brings the number of media workers killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023 to 208, according to the Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza.
In a statement on Monday, the GMO said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation” and called on press advocacy groups to denounce “these systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists and media professionals in Gaza”.
The GMO said it held Israel and its main ally, the United States, as well as “the countries participating in the genocide, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, fully responsible for committing this heinous crime”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the killing of Shabat and Mansour and called for an independent investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.
“The deliberate and targeted killing of a journalist, of a civilian, is a war crime,” Jodie Ginsberg, the CPJ’s chief executive said, adding the organisation has been investigating several cases in which Israel appears to have deliberately targeted a journalist, knowing them to be a media worker.
“That would amount to a war crime. Journalists and civilians must never be targeted”, she said, noting that the CPJ had spoken to Shabat for its own reports on the news void developing in northern Gaza because of Israel’s war.
‘Another bloody day’
Meanwhile, heavy Israeli bombardment across the besieged territory continued throughout Monday for the seventh straight day since Israel ended a fragile two-month ceasefire after imposing a renewed blockade on the Palestinian territory.
More than 700 have been killed, including hundreds of children, in a relentless wave of bombardments since the resumption of large-scale Israeli attacks on March 18.
Al Jazeera’s Abu Azzoum said it had been “another bloody day”, with medical sources saying at least 65 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn on Monday.
According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, at least 50,082 Palestinians have been confirmed killed and 113,408 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Lindaland
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