The number of Palestinian journalists killed during the ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip has risen to 217, following the death of Ahmad Anwar Abdelhadi Al-Helou, a designer and video editor for Quds News Network, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on various areas of the Strip.
This announcement came just hours after the killing of journalist Hassan Sammour, who was killed alongside his entire family in a strike targeting their home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
Gaza has thus witnessed the killing of two journalists in less than 24 hours, as part of what rights groups say is a deliberate and systematic campaign against media professionals since the beginning of the genocide launched by Israeli forces on 7 October 2023.
According to official data, the repeated attacks on journalists in Gaza have not been random or incidental but have shown clear patterns of targeted strikes, providing strong indications of an intent to silence the Palestinian voice and eliminate on-the-ground narratives.
Since the start of the assault, Israeli forces have systematically targeted media infrastructure — including bombing press offices, assassinating journalists, and obstructing the free flow of information.
The rising death toll among field-based journalists — many of whom work without safety equipment or institutional protection — constitutes a clear breach of Article 79 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977, which mandates the protection of civilian journalists during armed conflicts and prohibits treating them as military targets under any circumstances.
Violations extend beyond killings and include efforts to enforce an information blackout on the atrocities taking place in Gaza, through internet and communications blackouts, attacks on broadcasting infrastructure, and on-the-ground targeting of media workers.
Under international law, these acts amount to war crimes. Suppressing the press is a key component in the machinery of genocide, serving both as a tool for its execution and a means to conceal it.
In addition to journalists, Israel continues to carry out large-scale operations that have left around 173,000 Palestinians killed or wounded — most of them women and children — with over 11,000 still missing beneath the rubble. This is taking place amidst international silence and clear complicity from several Western governments, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, who continue to provide political and military backing.
The ongoing silence in the face of Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza, and the absence of accountability, renders all those supporting the occupation complicit — not only in the slaughter of journalists but also in the extermination of Palestinian civilians, including women and children.
