The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has strongly condemned the killing of six journalists in Palestine by an Israeli drone on Sunday.
UNESCO’s Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, made this known in a statement on Tuesday.
“I condemn the killing of journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammed Al-Khaldi, and call for a thorough and transparent investigation,” she said.
Five of the six worked for the influential Qatari-based media organisation Al Jazeera. Al-Sharif and Qreiqeh were on-air correspondents, while Zaher, Noufal, and Aliwa worked as camera operators. Al-Khaldi was a freelance photojournalist.
They were reportedly killed by an Israeli attack on a tent used by media personnel at the entrance of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) alleged that 28-year-old Al-Sharif was a serving Hamas operative. Al Jazeera strongly denies this, describing the attack as an “assassination” and “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom.”
The UN Human Rights Council-appointed independent expert on freedom of expression had on 31 July denounced an Israeli military spokesperson’s “repeated threats” and “unfounded accusations” against Al-Sharif, calling it “a blatant attempt to endanger his life and silence his reporting” in Gaza.
Two Special Rapporteurs on Tuesday described the killings as “an attempt to silence reporting on the ongoing genocide and starvation campaign” in Gaza.
“It is outrageous that the Israeli army dares to first launch a campaign to smear Anas Al-Sharif as Hamas in order to discredit his reporting and then kill him and his colleagues for speaking the truth to the world,” they said.
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The experts demanded an immediate investigation into the killings and full access for international media, which Israel currently bars from entering Gaza.
Special Rapporteurs and other independent experts are appointed by and report regularly to the Human Rights Council. They work in their individual capacity, are not UN staff, and receive no payment for their work.
UNESCO chief Azoulay stressed that targeting journalists reporting on conflicts is unacceptable and violates international law. She reiterated her call to respect UN Security Council Resolution 2222, unanimously adopted in 2015, to protect journalists, media professionals, and associated personnel in conflict situations.
UNESCO reports that since October 2023, at least 62 journalists and media workers have been killed in the line of duty in Palestine. This excludes deaths in circumstances unrelated to their work. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reports that at least 242 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the same period.
