JERUSALEM — Israel’s military targeted and killed an Al Jazeera correspondent and others with an airstrike late Sunday in Gaza, after press advocates said an Israeli “smear campaign” stepped up when Anas al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.
Both Israel and hospital officials in Gaza City confirmed the deaths of Mr. al-Sharif and colleagues, which the Committee to Protect Journalists and others described as retribution against those documenting the war in Gaza. Israel’s military asserted that al-Sharif had led a Hamas cell — an allegation that Al Jazeera and Mr. al-Sharif previously dismissed as baseless.
The military has previously said it targeted individuals it described as Hamas militants posing as reporters. Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern times.
Officials at Shifa Hospital said those killed while sheltering outside Gaza City’s largest hospital complex also included Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Qreiqeh, plus four other journalists and two other people. Five of the six slain journalists were Al Jazeera staffers. The strike damaged the entrance to the complex’s emergency building.
The airstrike occurred hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended a planned military offensive into some of Gaza’s most populated areas, including Gaza City, and said he directed the military to “bring in more foreign journalists” to Gaza.
The strike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused Mr. al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a July 24 video, Israel’s army spokesperson Avichay Adraee attacked Al Jazeera and accused Mr. al-Sharif of being part of Hamas’ military wing. Mr. Al-Sharif and his employer denied the allegations.
Condemnation has poured in from the U.N. human rights office, the Foreign Press Association, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Press Institute and Amnesty International, among others.
Al Jazeera called the strike a “targeted assassination” and accused Israeli officials of incitement, connecting al-Sharif’s death to the allegations that both the network and correspondent had denied.
“Anas and his colleagues were among the last remaining voices from within Gaza, providing the world with unfiltered, on-the-ground coverage of the devastating realities endured by its people,” the Qatari network said in a statement.
Apart from rare invitations to observe Israeli military operations, international media have been barred from entering Gaza for the duration of the war. Al Jazeera is among the few outlets still fielding a big team of reporters inside the besieged strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.
Al Jazeera is blocked in Israel and soldiers raided its offices in the occupied West Bank last year. Israel at the time ordered the closure of its local offices, while preventing the broadcast of its reports and blocking its websites.
The network has suffered heavy losses during the war, including 27-year-old correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, killed last summer, and freelancer Hossam Shabat, killed in an Israeli airstrike in March.