Category World News

US President Donald Trump said he is taking control of Washington, DC’s police force and deploying the National Guard, calling it “Liberation Day” for the US capital. He cited a need to combat “crime, bloodshed and bedlam”, despite data showing violent crime is at a 30-year low.

“I have lived pain in all its details and I have tasted pain and loss repeatedly. Despite this, I have never hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification. May God be a witness against those who remained silent and accepted our killing, and against those who choked our breath and whose hearts were not moved by the scattered remains of our children and women, and who did nothing to stop the massacre our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”

This is what Anas al-Sharif wrote in his “will” prepared four months before his martyrdom. It was posted on his social media account several hours after an Israeli strike killed him and journalists Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa at a media tent near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Anas al-Sharif was one of Gaza’s heroes. He was – without a doubt – the journalist closest to all our hearts.

People here in Gaza often hate the media. They see journalists either exaggerate and portray us as superhumans, able to withstand relentless bombing, the deprivation of food and water, and the loss of loved ones; or demonise us as “terrorists”, justifying the killing of our families and the destruction of our homes.

Anas was different; he did not distort the truth. He was one of us: raised in our refugee camps, suffering with us under bombs and amid starvation, mourning his loved ones, refusing to leave his community. He stayed behind in Gaza, steadfast like an olive tree, a living example of a true Palestinian.

Anas started reporting for Al Jazeera at the start of the genocide, but he quickly became a familiar face. He and Ismail al-Ghoul did not stop broadcasting from northern Gaza even when they faced constant threats. Their warm friendship, and the funny and sad moments they shared, made us feel closer to them.

After the martyrdom of Ismail last year – may God have mercy on him – we felt we had lost a dear brother, and were left only with Anas.

Last month, when Anas broke down on camera while reporting on the starvation, people told him: “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop, you are our voice.”

And indeed, he was our voice. We often imagined that when the end of the genocide comes, we will hear it announced by Anas al-Sharif’s voice. There was no journalist in the world more deserving of declaring that moment than Anas.

For me, Anas was more than just a reporter. He was an inspiration. He was the reason I picked up my pen every time I lost hope that anything would change because of what I write. I saw Anas reporting tirelessly – hungry or full, in summer or winter, threatened with death or surrounded by cameras.

His persistence convinced me I was wrong to believe that documenting the genocide was not moving anyone outside. Anas made me believe our story can reach where we cannot, crossing seas and oceans to every part of the world. And his resilience, working every day, every hour, forced me to hope … hope that if we kept speaking, someone might listen.

Anas is now gone, and I feel I was wrong to hope, wrong to believe in the justice of this world, watching him appeal – with eyes overflowing with tears – to a global conscience that proved to be low and selective.

They did not deserve your tears, Anas! They did not deserve your self-sacrifice so they would know our story. They do not hear because they refuse to.

You raised your voice, Anas, but you were calling out to those without conscience.

I wished the war had ended before you were martyred so I could go find you in Gaza and tell you that our voices had succeeded, they had reached to the outside world and driven change. I would have told you that you were my role model and your work kept me going. And if at that moment, you had smiled and called me your colleague, I would have cried with joy.

Your coverage ended, Anas, but the genocidal war did not. Today, we look helplessly at the vile occupation boasting about targeting you before the entire world – the same world you pleaded with until your last breath. Countries around the world remain silent; for them, economic deals and political interests are worth more than human lives.

Yet, the occupation will not silence us, Anas. It wants us to die without a voice because our voice, while we groan in pain and cry from loss, disturbs it, interferes with its genocidal drive.

Gaza will not give birth to another like you, Anas, nor someone like writer and poet Refaat Alareer, nor like hospital director Marwan al-Sultan. The occupation is targeting the best and brightest, those who have raised their voices and shown the world what Palestinians of dignity and integrity can do.

But we will not stay silent after these violent murders. Even if we know the world will not listen, we will keep speaking – because it is our fate and duty. We, the living Palestinians who survived this genocide, have to carry the legacy of our martyrs.

For me, that means speaking, writing, and exposing the crimes of this bloody and brutal occupation … until the day you dreamed of, Anas – the day this genocide, the most horrific in modern history, ends. The day you return to your ancestral home in al-Majdal and I return to my village, Yibna.

Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, 28, has been killed along with four of his colleagues in a deliberate Israeli attack on a media tent sheltering journalists outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

Al Jazeera reporter Hani al-Shaer said an Israeli drone hit the tent about 11:35pm (20:35 GMT) on Sunday.

In total, seven people were killed in the attack, including Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, 25; Mohammed Noufal, 29; and Moamen Aliwa, 23.

Israel deliberately kills Al Jazeera journalists

This is not the first time Israel has targeted Al Jazeera journalists covering the war in Gaza. Before Sunday night’s attack, at least five Al Jazeera journalists had been killed by Israel.

On December 14, 2023, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa was targeted by an Israeli air strike while reporting alongside Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, who was injured in the same attack.

Abudaqa was left to bleed to death at the Farhana school in Khan Younis, where they were filming, as emergency workers were blocked by the Israeli military from reaching the site.

On January 7, 2024, Wael’s eldest son and fellow Al Jazeera journalist, Hamza Dahdouh, was killed in a missile strike on the vehicle he was travelling in in Khan Younis.

On July 31, 2024, Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi were killed in an Israeli attack on the Shati refugee camp despite their vehicle bearing clear media markings and both wearing vests identifying themselves as members of the news media.

On December 15, Israel killed Al Jazeera journalist Ahmed al-Louh in an air strike in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp.

On March 24, Hossam Shabat, 23, was killed in an Israeli attack in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

Gaza: The deadliest war for journalists

Israel’s war on Gaza has been the single deadliest conflict for journalists.

​​According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, more journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023, than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan – combined.

According to Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym RSF, 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists with more than 120 killed. Since the start of this year, more than 50 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Targeting journalists is a war crime

Al Jazeera has condemned the targeted killing of its correspondents as “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom”, noting that al-Sharif and his colleagues were among the last voices reporting from inside Gaza as international media remained barred by Israel.

The Palestinian mission to the United Nations accused Israel of “deliberately assassinating” al-Sharif and Qreiqeh, saying they “systematically exposed and documented Israel’s genocide and starvation”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesperson called for an investigation and stressed that journalists everywhere must be allowed to work without fear of being targeted.

Amnesty International condemned the killings as a war crime and honoured al-Sharif as a “brave and extraordinary” reporter, noting he received the Human Rights Defender Award in 2024 for his commitment to press freedom.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemns the targeted assassination of its correspondents Anas Al Sharif and Mohammeel Qraiqea, along with photographers Ibrahim Al Thaher, and Mohamed Nofal, by Israeli forces.#JournalismIsNotACrime pic.twitter.com/F3p9PbhGZF

Every month, 13 journalists are killed in Gaza

Nearly 270 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza in 22 months of war – or about 13 journalists every month – according to a tally by Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in 2022.

What makes this statistic even more stark is that Gaza is losing voices on the ground at a time when Israel has banned international media from entering the besieged enclave.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said the killings of journalists and their detentions since October 7, 2023, have created a news void that will cause potential war crimes to go undocumented.

In June, the RSF, CPJ and news organisations published an open letter stating that many Palestinian journalists who have been relied on by reporters outside Gaza have faced a plethora of threats and many “face constant threats to their lives for doing their jobs: bearing witness”.

The targeting of reporters has continued ever since despite international condemnation of Israel’s actions.

In a statement, Amnesty International said: “Israel isn’t just assassinating journalists but attacking journalism itself by preventing the documentation of genocide.”

The names of the journalists and media workers killed in Israel’s war on Gaza are listed below: