DayofPal—The entire Al Jazeera press crew in Gaza City has been tragically assassinated by an Israeli airstrike on a press tent next to Al-Shifa hospital, west of Gaza.
The slain crew contains five members of Al Jazeera, including reporter Anas Al-Sharif, reporter Mohammed Qreiqa, cameraman Ibrahim Zaher, cameraman Moamen Alaywa, driver Mohammed Noufal.
Hani Mahmoud commented on the attack saying that he was near the tent and the journalists had gathered in one area, trying to either talk to each other, help each other to survive these conditions, when a drone strike hit the camp, killing Anas Al-Sharif and his colleague Mohammed Qreiqeh.
Medical Sources at Al-Shifa hospital said that the attack killed seven people, including the five press members of Al Jazeera.
The assassination massacre came after long months of Israeli incitement campaign against Al Jazeera journalists, particularly Anas Al- Sharif, whom the Israeli army accused of belonging to Hamas and leading a resistance cell.
Just a week ago, an Israeli military official directly accused Anas and directly ran a campaign of incitement on Al Jazeera and correspondents on the ground because of their work, because of their relentless reporting on the starvation and the famine and the malnutrition.
Mohammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza, tells Al Jazeera that Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif was a “very young boy, loved by everyone, by his entire community.”
“He’s held enormous influence there, and that’s precisely why Israel murdered him”, he said.
“I’ve looked into the allegations that Israel produced trying to smear him as a Hamas militant, the allegations were completely contradictory”, Shehada said.
He explained that Israel, in one document, lists him as “an elite combat militant”, and then in another as part of a “completely different unit”, a separate document lists him as having suffered incapacitating wounds and injuries that would prevent him from being a militant.
“Remember that Israel’s most prominent journalist, Barak Ravid… was an intelligence officer, there is a number of Israeli journalists who, throughout the genocide in Gaza, took this sort of revolving door kind of lifestyle, where they would go and serve in… combat, put on military gear, and then the next day, they would hold the camera” he said.
“There’s zero evidence that Al-Sharif took part in any hostilities, in any armed actions, aided or abetted any kind of these hostilities. None at all. His entire daily routine was standing in front of a camera from morning to evening”.
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