The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday condemned the killing of Palestinian reporters Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces.
The CPJ called for an independent international investigation into whether the Palestinian journalists were deliberately targeted.
A statement issued by the CPJ said that on March 24, deadly Israeli strikes hit the car of Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher’s Shabat near northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, and the home in southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis of Mansour, who worked for the pro-Islamic Jihad, Beirut-based Palestine Today TV.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, whose killings may have been targeted. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”
On March 18, Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.
On October 23, the IDF accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working with Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. CPJ has called on Israel to stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press.
Shabat told CPJ in October that he was not a member of Hamas. “We convey the truth on Al Jazeera Mubasher, and we move within the areas classified by Israel as safe,” Shabat said. “We are citizens, and we convey their voices. Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”
More than 170 journalists and media workers have been killed since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023, the CPJ statement added.