Five Gaza journalists killed in Israeli attack on armed group

The BBC has been unable to verify the claims made by either side, and Israel prevented international media from entering and working freely on the ground in Gaza.

Quds Today is affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an armed group that participated in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The unprecedented attack triggered the war in Gaza. The television channel is believed to receive funding from the group.

Separately, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in far northern Gaza said on Thursday that about 50 people, including five of his staff, had been killed in an Israeli attack on a building near the hospital. Among them were a pediatrician and two paramedics.

The IDF said it was “not aware of any attacks” in the hospital area and added that it was investigating reports that five doctors had been killed.

“The number of victims reported in the media does not align with the information held by the IDF,” he said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “devastated by reports” of five journalists killed in the central Gaza Strip.

“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” he said.

The Israeli military named the five dead as Ibrahim Jamal Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Ali; Faisal Abdullah Muhammad Abu Qamsan; Mohammed Ayad Khamis al-Ladaa; Ayman Nihad Abd Alrahman Jadi; and Fadi Ihab Muhammad Ramadan Hassouna.

He said that “intelligence from multiple sources confirmed” that all were PIJ agents, and that a list found during an operation in Gaza “explicitly identified four” of them as such.

In a statement, Quds Today said the men “were killed while carrying out their humanitarian and media duty.”

As of December 20, at least 133 Palestinian journalists had been killed over the course of the war, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists, according to CPJ.

The press freedom organization has called for accountability for Palestinian journalists who have been directly targeted by the Israeli military.

At least five other people were also reported killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza City on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry also said another 20 people were injured in the city’s al-Zeitoun neighborhood.

The Israeli military has not commented on the reported bombing.

Meanwhile, the father of a two-week-old Palestinian girl told the BBC how his daughter froze to death in a tent in Gaza – the third child in a week to die in similar conditions.

Mahmoud Ismail Al-Faseeh said he woke up in the bitter cold and found his daughter, Sila, suffering seizures. She was rushed to hospital but died of hypothermia, the head of pediatrics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis told the Associated Press news agency.

The family was taking refuge in the al-Mawasi area on the Gaza coast, a strip of land designated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a humanitarian zone but which has been hit by airstrikes.

Ahmed al-Farra, head of pediatrics, said two other babies, one three days old and the other one month old, had been brought in in the past 48 hours after dying of hypothermia.

Hopes for progress toward a ceasefire in recent days have begun to fade, with Hamas and Israel blaming each other.

Hamas accused the Israeli government of imposing “new conditions” that it said were delaying the deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the group was reneging on agreements that had already been reached on a possible ceasefire.

The latest statements mark a notable change of tone on both sides following optimistic signals.

The Israeli military launched airstrikes and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in response to last year’s Hamas attack. Some 1,200 people were killed in the attack and another 251 were returned to Gaza as hostages.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s Health Ministry says. According to the UN, almost two million people (90% of the population) have been displaced.

Additional reporting by Jaroslav Lukiv.