BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike killed three journalists as they slept in a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon early Friday. This was one of the worst attacks on the media since cross-border fighting broke out a year ago.
This was an unusual airstrike on an area that had previously been spared from airstrikes and used by the media as a base for reporting on the war.
The 3 a.m. airstrike reduced to rubble a series of mountain huts surrounded by trees rented by various media covering the war. The car, which had the word “PRESS” written on it, was overturned and covered in dust and debris, including at least one satellite dish. The live broadcast was completely destroyed. The Israeli military did not issue any warning before the attack and later said it was investigating.
Mohammad Farhat, a reporter for al-Jadeed TV in southern Lebanon, said everyone rushed out in their night clothes. “The first question we asked each other was, ‘Are you alive?'”
Those killed were Ghassan Najjar, a camera operator for the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and Mohamed Rida, a broadcast engineer, as well as a camera operator who worked for the Lebanese Hezbollah group’s Al-Manar TV. Mr. Wissam Qasim. This followed a strike earlier in the week that hit al-Mayadeen’s offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Both news organizations are affiliated with Hezbollah and its main backer, Iran.
The airstrikes early Friday were the latest in a series of attacks by Israel against journalists covering the wars in Gaza and Lebanon over the past year. Israel has not commented on what the target of Friday’s attack was. But human rights groups say the deliberate targeting of journalists is a war crime.
"Journalists are civilians entitled to protection under international humanitarian law,” said Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Israel’s targeting of civilian institutions solely because of their association with Hezbollah is particularly troubling.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was appalled by the killings of the three journalists and called for an independent investigation into why their accommodation was targeted.
Carlos Martínez de la Serna, the group’s program director, said: “CPJ has committed another deadly attack on journalists, this time attacking a facility in southern Lebanon where 18 journalists are staying. “We are deeply outraged by the Israeli airstrikes.”
The strike in the Hasbaya region drew immediate condemnation from officials, journalists, and media advocacy groups. The TV station’s reporting team had arrived in Hasbaya thinking it would be safer because Israel had issued an evacuation order for the town further south where they were reporting.
“That’s why we think it’s a direct target aimed at driving journalists out of the south,” said Elsie Mufarzi, coordinator of the Lebanese Alternative Press Syndicate. “They want to prevent journalists from reporting or being stationed in southern Lebanon.”
Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary said the journalists were killed while reporting on what he called Israeli “crimes,” noting that they were part of a large number of media workers.
“Given that there were 18 journalists at the scene representing seven news organizations, this was a premeditated and deliberate surveillance and tracking assassination,” he said in a post on X.
attacked while sleeping
Imran Khan, one of the journalists at the Hasbaya Village Club guesthouse and a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera’s English edition, said the airstrike happened without warning at around 3:30 a.m.
“They were just journalists in bed after a long day of reporting on the conflict,” he wrote on social media, adding that he and his team were not injured.
Hussein Hoteit, a cameraman for Egypt’s Al Khaira TV, said he was asleep when he was woken up by a “huge weight” as the walls and ceiling collapsed. Minutes later, he was miraculously rescued by colleagues who managed to move the debris that was covering him. Their team’s home was closest to the one where Almayadeen lives.
He said two missiles hit the mountain hut next door, but he could not hear a sound. He spoke from a hospital bed where he was being treated for a thigh injury.
Three of the 18 journalists staying at the guesthouse, including an Egyptian, were injured.
Youmna Fawaz, a journalist with Lebanon’s MTV station, said she was woken up by the roof falling on her head. She suffered minor injuries.
“This targeting destroyed the entire facility. All the chalets were destroyed and the roof fell from above,” Fawaz told The Associated Press. “This was a safe space. I had never been targeted before.”
unprecedented amount of damage
Friday’s death is the latest in a long list of journalists killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza and Lebanon over the past year.
CPJ said in a report earlier this month that at least 128 journalists and media workers, all but five of them Palestinians, were killed in Gaza and Lebanon. This is more journalists killed in any year since records began in 1992. All but two of the killings were attributed to Israeli forces.
“One year on, Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza has exacted an unprecedented and terrible toll on Palestinian journalists and the region’s media landscape,” the newspaper said. CPJ announced that it has determined that at least five journalists, including one who worked in Lebanon last year, were direct targets of Israeli forces. The group is investigating other incidents and unconfirmed reports that other journalists have been killed, disappeared, detained, injured or threatened.
The journalist’s killing has sparked an international outcry from media advocacy groups and UN experts, but Israel says it did not intentionally target journalists.
Lebanon’s Minister of Health announced that 11 journalists have been killed and eight others injured in Israeli shelling in Lebanon over the past year.
In November 2023, two Al-Mayadeen TV journalists were killed in a drone attack on their reporting site. A month earlier, Israeli artillery fire in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah on a hill near the Israeli border, leading to the death of Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah, who was killed by Israeli artillery fire in southern Lebanon, and by French news agency Agence France-Presse, Agence France-Presse and Qatar. Other reporters from Al Jazeera TV were seriously injured.
This week, Israel accused journalists working for Al Jazeera of being part of an armed group, citing documents it said it had discovered in Gaza. The network denied the claims, calling them “a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region.”
CPJ similarly dismissed them, stating that “Israel repeats similar unproven claims without providing any credible evidence.”
Jad Shaloul, a spokesperson for the Samir Kassir Eyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom, told The Associated Press on Friday that the press center bombing was a deliberate act to erase the truth. .
“This means they are establishing media control,” he said, adding that it is a troubling trend now moving from Gaza to Lebanon.
Al-Mayadeen director Ghassan bin Zid claimed that Friday’s Israeli attack was deliberate and directed at those covering elements of the military offensive.
Ali Shuib, al-Manar correspondent in south Lebanon, said a cameraman he had been working with for months was killed in the attack.
“We have been reporting the news and conveying the suffering of the victims, and now we are the news and the victims of Israeli crimes,” Shuib said in a video aired on Al-Manar TV. said.
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Karam reported from London. Associated Press writer Bassem Mourou in Beirut contributed.
