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According to officials, there is a possibility that Israeli soldiers are deliberately targeting journalists in order to stifle their reporting.
Experts from the UN have denounced the murderous assaults on reporters and media personnel in Gaza and have urged Israel to let journalists to access the confined area while guaranteeing their safety.
The experts referred to the Gaza War as the “most dangerous conflict for journalists in recent history” in a statement they published on Thursday.
“We have received alarming reports that journalists have been attacked, even though they are easily recognized by their ‘press’-branded jackets and helmets or because they are traveling in vehicles with clear markings, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injuries, and detentions are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical reporting,” the statement read.
The experts included UN rapporteurs on free expression (Irene Khan), Palestine (Francesca Albanese), and extrajudicial murders (Morris Tidball-Binz).
The statement stated that since the start of the conflict, more than 122 journalists and media professionals have died in Gaza, citing UN data. Three Lebanese journalists were murdered by Israeli bombardment, while four Israeli journalists were killed in the October 7 incident.
“In one of the bloodiest, most brutal conflicts of our times, we pay particular tribute to the courage and resiliency of journalists and media workers in Gaza who continue to put their own lives on the line every day in the course of their duty, while also enduring enormous hardship and the tragic loss of colleagues, friends, and families,” the experts said.
The UN representatives emphasized the situation of Wael Dahdouh, the head of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau, whose wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham, and grandson Adam were slain in an Israeli airstrike in October.
Later, Dahdouh was injured in an Israeli drone assault that claimed the life of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, a colleague. His oldest son, Hamza, an Al Jazeera journalist, and colleague journalist Mustafa Thuraya perished in an Israeli assault last month.
As citizens, journalists have the right to protection under international humanitarian law. According to UN experts, targeted attacks and deaths of journalists constitute war crimes. They demanded unbiased inquiries into the assassinations of journalists.
Reporters without borders have expressed concern at what appears to be a targeted attack on journalists in Gaza.
In addition to the murder of journalists, Israel has been increasing its attacks and crackdowns on media personnel in the occupied Palestinian territory in recent months.
A New York-based monitoring group called the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that since October 7, 25 journalists have been detained in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The organization claims that others experienced “assaults, threats, cyberattacks, and censorship.”
In Gaza, attacks against journalists occur in the midst of larger-scale violence directed on Palestinian land. According to UN representatives and humanitarian organizations, this conflict is among the worst of the modern era.
Since October 7, Israel has murdered over 27,000 Palestinians, razing most of the land in the process of continuing its military onslaught.
UN head Antonio Guterres declared last month that “the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the number of civilian casualties in such a short period are totally unprecedented during my mandate.”
SOURCE:-ALJAZEERA
