 "Journalist or terrorist? Who was Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera reporter killed by Israel airstrike in Gaza?")
Journalist or Hamas leader? That’s the question many are asking after an Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif along with four other journalists, as they were resting inside a tent for the press outside Al-Shifa Hospital’s main gate in Gaza.
Shortly after the strike, the Israeli military stated that they had targeted al-Sharif, who they labelled as a “terrorist”, saying he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.
However, Al Jazeera has refuted these claims and in a statement said, “The order to kill Anas al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, along with his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence voices ahead of the occupation of Gaza.”
The “targeted assassination” was “yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” it further said in a statement.
But who was al-Sharif? What exactly occurred on Sunday night? How dangerous is Gaza for journalists? We explore this and more.
Israel’s airstrike on Sunday night
On Sunday night, as journalists rested in a tent outside the Al-Shifa’s main gate, Israel launched an airstrike targeting it. A total of seven people have died, including al-Sharif and five other journalists.
The other journalists have been identified as Mohammed Qreiqeh, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa. Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news outlet said that the slain journalists “were targeted in their tent, they weren’t covering from the front line”.
Shortly after the airstrike, another Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud, who was just a block away at the time, said: “This is perhaps the hardest thing I’m reporting about the past 22 months. I’m not far from al-Shifa hospital, just one block away, and I could hear the massive explosion that took place in the past half an hour or so, near al-Shifa hospital.
“I could see it when it lit up the sky and, within moments, the news circulated that it was the journalist camp at the main gate of the al-Shifa hospital.”
Al-Sharif and his colleagues have been reporting from Gaza since the beginning of the conflict.
He further added that the reporters were killed “because of their relentless reporting on the starvation and the famine and the malnutrition” suffered by Palestinians in Gaza, “because they’re bringing the truth of this crime to everyone”.
Anas al Sharif: A journalist constantly threatened
Twenty-eight-year-old al-Sharif was a well-known Gaza-based journalist who reported extensively from the northern part of the Strip for Al Jazeera Arabic. Prior to his work with the news outlet, he graduated from the media faculty at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza City. In 2018, he received the Best Young Journalist Award in Palestine for his reporting in Gaza.
Following the October 7, 2023 attack resulting in the Israel war in Gaza, al-Sharif became Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces working on the ground in Gaza, providing daily reports in regular coverage.
In December 2023, al-Sharif lost his father when Israel launched an airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City. At that time, he promised to continue his work. “Despite all of this, and despite the targeting of my home and the killing of my father, I will continue to cover from Jabalia refugee camp and from northern Gaza,” al-Sharif had said.
Early this January, after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, al-Sharif drew widespread attention when, during a live broadcast, he removed his body armour while surrounded by dozens of Gaza residents celebrating the temporary halt in hostilities.
A few minutes before his death, al-Sharif posted on X: “Breaking: Intense, concentrated Israeli bombardment using ‘fire belts’ is hitting the eastern and southern areas of Gaza City.”
In a final message, which Al Jazeera said had been written on April 6 and which was posted to al-Sharif’s X account after his death, the reporter said that he had “lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”
“Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half,” he continued.
Al-Sharif now leaves behind a wife and two children.
Notably, his killing comes a month after the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-profit organisation, had expressed worry for his safety and that he feared for his life after he was the target of “an Israeli military smear campaign, which he believes is a precursor to his assassination.”
Israel calls al-Sharif Hamas terrorist
In confirming the strike on Sunday, Israel claimed that al-Sharif “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation and was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forces”.
It claimed it had intelligence and documents found in Gaza as proof but didn’t outline exactly what evidence they had. In a post on X, they wrote, “A press badge isn’t a shield for terrorism.”
Prior to the strike on Sunday, Israeli IDF spokesperson Avichai Adraee shared a video of al-Sharif on X and accused him of being a member of Hamas’ military wing.
#أنس_الشريف أطلق حملة إعلامية شخصية قد تهدف لرفع مكانته التنظيمية في القسام لكنها لن تنجح في اخفاء حقيقة موثوقة بالوثائق التنظيمية: أنس هو جزء من آلة حماس العسكرية انتقل خلال الحرب للعمل في أكثر قناة إجرامًا وإساءة لاهالي غزة لأنها ببساطة تحاول تحويل الهزيمة إلى النصر على حساب… https://t.co/FWSuEIoS00
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) July 24, 2025
However, al-Sharif had disputed these claims, stating on X, “I reaffirm: I, Anas Al-Sharif, am a journalist with no political affiliations. My only mission is to report the truth from the ground — as it is, without bias,” he wrote. “At a time when a deadly famine is ravaging Gaza, speaking the truth has become, in the eyes of the occupation, a threat.”
And following Sunday’s strikes, other activists and organisations have condemned Israel, saying there was no proof to link al-Sharif to Hamas. Muhammed Shehada, an analyst at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, said there was “zero evidence” that al-Sharif took part in any hostilities. “His entire daily routine was standing in front of a camera from morning to evening.”
Danger to journalists in Gaza
The death of al-Sharif and other correspondents in Gaza is yet another example of the perils journalists face while reporting from the besieged enclave. According to the CPJ, 186 journalists have been confirmed killed since the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in October 2023.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in early July that more than 200 journalists had been killed in Gaza since the war began, including several Al Jazeera journalists.
In fact, a number of Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in Gaza. In late July, Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi were killed in an IDF airstrike. Chief correspondent Wael al Dahdouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in October 2023 and he himself was injured in an attack weeks later that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.
With inputs from agencies
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