How Israeli drone strikes are killing journalists in Gaza
An Israeli soldier holds a drone near the Gaza fence on 6 January 2024
Mariana Abreu, Aïda Delpuech, Eloïse Layan and Yuval Abraham June 25, 2024 report in +972 in partnership with Forbidden Stories:
According to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 103 journalists and media workers are among the more than 37,000 Palestinian casualties of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip since October 7. Faced with the deadliest war for journalists in modern history, Forbidden Stories — whose mission is to continue the work of journalists who are killed on the job — set out to investigate the targeting of the press in Gaza and the West Bank.
In a unique collaboration, Forbidden Stories brought together 50 journalists from 13 media organizations around the world. The consortium analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which Israel has allegedly targeted, threatened, or wounded members of the press over the past eight months. Unable to report freely from inside the Strip, consortium members remotely contacted over 120 journalists and witnesses to military activities in Gaza and the West Bank; consulted around 25 ballistics, weapons, and audio experts, including Earshot; and used satellite images from Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies.
Today, after four months of collaborative work, we are together publishing “The Gaza Project.” Below is one of two articles from the project that +972 is co-publishing with Forbidden Stories.
A Drone Strike
On the afternoon of Jan. 22, four Palestinian journalists climbed a small hill in northern Gaza to try to find an internet signal. Anas Al-Sharif, Mahmoud Shalha, Emad Ghaboun, and Mahmoud Sabbah were in the Tal Al-Zaatar region, reporting on the famine that has gripped the Gaza Strip since the Israeli offensive began last fall, following Hamas’s October 7 attack. As they searched for a signal to transmit videos to their editors, a sudden blast knocked the group to the ground.
In a cloud of smoke, Al-Sharif, who was wearing a press vest and suffered minor injuries to his back, bolted toward his colleagues who were now lying in the blood-stained rubble. Miraculously, they had all survived, though another civilian was killed in the attack. Ghaboun, who suffered the most severe wounds out of the four journalists, had to be carried to a nearby hospital in the scoop of a bulldozer.
The journalists said they recall a “surveillance drone” targeting them. Although we were unable to obtain real-time footage of the strike, a video Al-Sharif took in the aftermath of the attack, which was analyzed by experts, corroborates the presence of a drone.
For the full list of articles comprising “The Gaza Project” and more information about the collaboration, click here.