Two Al Jazeera journalists were killed in an Israeli air strike within the Shati refugee camp along the Gaza Strip, the network announced on Wednesday.
The journalists — reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi — were traveling by car when their vehicle was hit by a missile, the channel reported.
The two were in the area to report on the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated near Iran’s capital of Tehran. At the time of the strike, both were wearing vests that identified themselves as press, and their vehicle was clearly marked, Al Jazeera said.
“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,” a spokesperson for Al Jazeera Media Group said in a statement.
The network added that they considered the deaths to be part of a “targeted assassination” by Israeli military forces, and that they intended to “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.”
The Israeli government has not commented on the matter.
More than 100 journalists have lost their lives covering the conflict between Israel and Gaza, with the latest wave of violence starting last October. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a not-for-profit group that promotes press freedom around the world, put the preliminary death figure at 111, while government officials in Gaza said the count was as high as 165.
Four Al Jazeera journalists have been killed since the military action began last year, and several others have been seriously injured. Last December, Al Jazeera reporter Samer Abudaqa was killed in an air strike in Khan Yunis; the following month, his son, Hamza Dahdouh, was killed in an Israeli missile strike in the same area. Hamza’s father, Wael Dahdouh, was among the Al Jazeera correspondents reported as injured while performing their duties in covering the war.
On Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on U.S.-based media outlets to “speak out” after the killings of al-Ghoul and al-Refee.
“The Israeli government continues its campaign of targeting journalists who report on their daily atrocities in the Gaza genocide,” Ibrahim Hooper, the National Communications Director of CAIR, said in a statement. “How many more reporters, how many more innocent people have to be killed by this rogue state before the Biden administration speaks out and takes concrete action to end the genocide it is enabling?”
Hooper continued: “Media outlets and journalists in our nation and worldwide must speak out forcefully in defense of their colleagues in Gaza who are under daily threat of attack and death by a far-right, genocidal government determined to silence their voices.”
