Israeli Strike Targets Press Tent at Gaza Hospital, Killing One and Injuring Others – Tareq S. Hajjaj 7/23/24

Source: Mondoweiss.net

An Israeli strike targeted a tent inside the courtyard of a hospital in the central Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian journalist. Eyewitnesses told Mondoweiss the strike was precise, hitting only the tent shelter that was clearly marked as ‘press’.

On Monday morning, July 24, an Israeli strike targeted a tent housing journalists inside the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian and injuring two others.

According to witnesses and those familiar with the area, the tent that was targeted had a ‘press’ sign hanging on its door, and was known in and around the hospital as the tent where press would stay.

The tents adjacent to the journalists’ tent were not targeted, and the people sheltering inside were reportedly not harmed. The precise nature of the strike led many to believe that it was a targeted drone attack on the journalists. Mondoweiss could not independently confirm the nature of the strike.

Video clips of the explosion and its aftermath were published on social media, showing the journalist’s equipment, press vests, helmet, laptop, and camera strewn inside the tent, while a man lays on the ground, his head burned and some of his organs spilling out. He was identified as Hidar al-Mussader, a lecturer at Gaza University, and a researcher and writer whose work had been published on Al Jazeera. The Gaza media office identified al-Mussader as a journalist and member of the press.

The attack on the journalist tent was the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on the press since, and before, October 7th. Throughout Israel’s war on Gaza, it has targeted Palestinian journalists in Gaza and Lebanese journalists in southern Lebanon in their field of work, in their homes with their families, and in journalists’ tents and shelters like the one at the Al-Aqsa martyrs hospital.

The government media office in the Gaza Strip issued a brief statement after the bombing of the journalists’ tent on Monday, in which it said that the number of journalists killed by Israel since the beginning of the war had reached 163 journalists.

Earlier this year, a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) noted that more than 75% of all journalists killed around the world in 2023 were killed in the Gaza war….

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