- Al Jazeera's Hossam Shabat Mubasher and Palestine Today's Mohammad Mansour were the first victims as violence resumed
LONDON: Two journalists were killed in separate Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip on Monday, the first deaths of journalists since clashes resumed last week.
Al Jazeera confirmed that Hossam Shabat, a journalist for Al Jazeera Mubasher, was killed in eastern Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. The Qatari channel reported that witnesses claimed his car was directly hit by Israeli forces, although no further details were provided.
In a separate incident, an airstrike north of Khan Younis killed Palestine Today correspondent Mohammad Mansour, his wife and son. Their home was hit without warning.
The government's media office in the Gaza Strip condemned the attacks, calling them “systematic crimes against Palestinian journalists and media workers.” In a statement, it called on the International Federation of Journalists, the Arab Union of Journalists and other global media organizations to condemn the killings.
Mohammed Mansour, a reporter for Palestine Today, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis.
Israel continues to kill Palestinian journalists pic.twitter.com/yo52t1xW9p
— Hind Khudari (@Hind_Gaza) March 24, 2025
“We hold the Israeli occupation, the US administration and the countries that participated in the genocide, such as the UK, Germany and France, fully responsible for committing this heinous crime,” the statement said.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the deaths of Shabat and Mansour bring the total number of media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 to at least 170. However, the government's media office claims the number is as high as 208.
CPJ Director General Jodi Ginsberg condemned Shabat's killing, noting that he was one of six Al Jazeera journalists accused by the Israeli military of being “militants.”
She said: “This is a pattern we have seen repeatedly in this war and in previous ones. And now he appears to have been deliberately targeted for a direct hit on his vehicle.”
#Gaza: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the killing of Palestinian journalists Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour by the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip on Monday and calls for an independent international investigation to determine whether they were deliberately targeted.
Read more: https://t.co/Z0JOOtlclW pic.twitter.com/GfTZJAnbsu
— CPJ MENA (@CPJMENA) March 24, 2025
Ginsberg stressed that deliberately attacking and killing a journalist or civilian is a war crime. “Journalists and civilians should never be targeted,” she said, adding that CPJ is investigating several incidents in which Israel appears to have deliberately targeted journalists.
“This would be tantamount to a war crime. Journalists and civilians should never be targeted,” she said, adding that her organization had been in contact with Shabat to obtain its own reports on the news vacuum left in northern Gaza by Israel's war.
