By Staff, Agencies The Hamas resistance movement has strongly condemned the deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian journalists and media professionals by “Israeli” forces in Gaza, describing such actions as a “war crime”. In a statement issued late on Sunday, the Gaza-based group denounced an “Israeli” airstrike that killed Palestinian journalist Ahmed Al-Louh and five Palestinian Civil Defense workers in the central Gaza Strip earlier that day.
Hamas emphasized that these attacks are intended to “terrorize Palestinian journalists and prevent them from performing their role in exposing the crimes and atrocities being committed by the occupation army against our people and land.” The group also called on international press organizations to take a firm stance against the occupying entity’s ongoing crimes against Palestinian journalists, to provide them with all means of support, and to expose the occupying entity’s brutal actions.
Louh, a cameraman for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network and other outlets, was killed on Sunday during the strike on the Civil Defense post in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, according to medics and local journalists.
Al Jazeera Arabic reported that Louh was working at the time of his death, wearing a press vest and helmet.
He was transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah city.
Al Jazeera Media Network condemned Louh’s killing and called on human rights and media organizations “to condemn the ‘Israeli’ Occupation’s systematic killing of journalists in cold blood, the evasion of responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice.” The Popular Resistance Committees [PRC] also condemned Louh’s assassination, labeling it a blatant war crime consistent with the ongoing targeting of journalists in Gaza by the “Israeli” army.
“The crime of killing journalists is part of the desperate and failed attempts by the Zionist enemy to hide the truth about its crimes against our people in the Gaza Strip.
The assassination of Ahmed al-Louh and other media professionals will never stop other Palestinian journalists from playing their role in exposing the brutal and bloody crimes and massacres that the Zionist army is committing against the Palestinian people,” the group stated.
Louh’s death brings the total number of Palestinian media workers killed during “Israel’s” war on Gaza to 196, according to the strip’s Government Media Office.
Journalists in Gaza face heightened risks while covering the ongoing genocidal war, particularly amid “Israeli” ground offensives and airstrikes, as well as challenges such as disrupted communications, supply shortages, and power outages.
Backed by the United States and its Western allies, “Israel” launched its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, following the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
The operation was carried out in response to the entity’s decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.
The entity’s ongoing onslaught has so far caused the martyrdom of 45,028 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 106,962 others, with thousands more missing and presumed dead under the rubble