Who are the Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza hospital?

Israeli strikes on a hospital in Gaza have left nearly two dozen dead including a number of journalists. At least 19 people have been killed at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, medical officials said.

Eyewitnesses said Israel conducted two strikes on the Nasser hospital – an initial attack and then a follow-up attack after people rushed to the scene to help.

The ‘double tap’ attack on one of the few remaining hospitals in Gaza is said to have killed journalists, doctors and civil defence workers.

The development comes just weeks after Israel killed prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif and four other journalists in a strike in front of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Israel later claimed that Al-Sharif worked for Hamas, which Al Jazeera denied.

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The Committee to Protect Journalists. (CPJ) had warned that Al-Sharif, who won a Pulitzer Prize along with a team of journalists in 2024, was being smeared so that Israel could target him.

But what do we know about the journalists killed?

Let’s take a closer look

What we know about the journalists killed?

Mariam Dagga –freelancer for AP

Mariam Dagga was a visual journalist who freelanced for the _AP_ during the war in Gaza. She also worked for other news outlets including Independent Arabic, the Arabic language version of the British Independent.

Dagga has a 13-year-old son who was earlier evacuated from Gaza. She has been reporting from the Nasser hospital in Khan Younus. Her most recently reports were on the hospital’s doctors struggling to save children from starvation.

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In one of Dagga’s last social media posts on Sunday, she put up a selfie of herself. Dagga in a profile two years ago told CNN, “We are covering the war on Gaza because this is our journalistic duty. It is entrusted upon us.”

“We challenged the Israeli occupation. We challenged the difficult circumstances and the reality of this war, a genocidal war,” Dagga added. “The war is the only thing that separated me from my son”.

Dagga at the time said she had parents in northern Gaza. AP editor Abby Sewell wrote on X, “She was a true hero, like all of our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza”. “We are doing everything we can to keep our journalists in Gaza safe as they continue to provide crucial eyewitness reporting in difficult and dangerous conditions,” the AP said in a statement.

Mohammed Salam - Al Jazeera

Mohammed Salam was a camera man for Al Jazeera. He also worked for Middle East Eye. Salam married Hala Asfour, another Palestinian journalist, last year. Al Jazeera has condemned the attack.

 Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera, told Sky News that Salam was “trying to get some footage of the area,” at the time he was killed. “They were reporting closer to the hospital, knowing that was somehow safer than the frontline,” Moawad said.

“We’re talking about a crime against journalism,” he added.

“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns, in the strongest possible terms, this horrific crime committed by the Israeli occupation forces, who have directly targeted and assassinated journalists as part of a systematic campaign to silence the truth,” the broadcaster said in a statement.

“The blood of our martyred journalists in Gaza has not yet dried before the Israeli occupation forces committed another crime against Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammed Salam, together with three other photojournalists,” the network added.

Al Jazeera said the attack showed “a clear intent to bury the truth”.

Hussam al-Masri - Reuters

He was killed near a live broadcasting position operated by Reuters on an upper floor just below the roof of the hospital in Khan Younis in an initial strike, according to Palestinian health officials.

Masri operated a Reuters live video feed from the hospital, which suddenly shut down at the moment of the initial strike.

Photographer Hatem Khaled, also a Reuters contractor, was injured in the strike. Khaled has extensively reported on the war in Gaza for Reuters.

A spokesperson for Reuters said: “We are devastated to learn of the death of Reuters contractor Hussam al-Masri and injuries to another of our contractors, Hatem Khaled, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser hospital in Gaza today.”

“We are urgently seeking more information and have asked authorities in Gaza and Israel to help us get urgent medical assistance for Hatem,” the spokesperson added in a statement.

“We send our deep condolences and thoughts to Hussam’s and Moaz’s families and loved ones and will support them as best we can”.

 Moaz Abu Taha and Ahmad Abu Aziz – Freelance journalists

Moaz Abu Taha was a freelance photojournalist who worked with several news organisations including occasionally contributing to Reuters.

AFP journalists had said that Abu Taha, a journalist, had also worked with some Palestinian and international outlets.

Ahmad Abu Aziz is said to have worked freelance for the Quds Feed Network and other media outlets like Middle East Eye.

 Experts say Palestinian journalists often base themselves out of hospitals in order to access Wi-Fi and electricity.

Israel says ordered inquiry, rights groups attack

The Israeli military said it “carried out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.” It did not explain the reasons for the attack.

“The Chief of the General Staff instructed to conduct an initial inquiry as soon as possible,” it said. It added that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and does not target journalists as such”.

The Foreign Press Association has demanded an “immediate explanation” from Israel. “This is among the deadliest Israeli attacks on journalists working for international media since the Gaza war began,” the organisation said in a statement.

“We demand an immediate explanation from the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Prime Minister’s office. We call on Israel once and for all to halt its abhorrent practice of targeting journalists,” it said. “This has gone on far too long.”

Thibaut Bruttin, the director general of Reporters Without Borders, said press freedom advocates had never seen such a severe step backward for reporters’ safety. He noted that journalists have been killed both in indiscriminate strikes and in targeted attacks that Israel’s military has acknowledged carrying out.

“They are doing everything they can to silence independent voices that are trying to report on Gaza”, Bruttin said.

The war in Gaza has proved one of the deadliest in the world for journalists. Israel has barred all foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip since the start of the war in 2023.

Reporting from the territory throughout the war has been produced by Palestinian journalists, many of whom have worked for many years for international media organisations, including wire services such as Reuters and the Associated Press.

Around 200 journalists have been killed since the beginning of the 22-month conflict in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attacks, as per the CPJ. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate puts that figure closer to 250 journalists.

The International Federation of Journalists has said it estimates that at least least 212 journalists and media workers have been killed, with others missing.  The CPJ has accused Israel of “engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented”.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has slammed condemned Israel for the strikes, saying it represented “an open war against free media, with the aim of terrorising journalists and preventing them from fulfilling their professional duty of exposing its crimes to the world”.

Israel has more and more been accused by experts of conducting a genocide in Gaza –  which it denies. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued arrest warrants have been issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Both men have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“No conflict in modern history has seen a higher number of journalists killed than Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” Amnesty International has said.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 62,744 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.

With input from agencies