More than 250 media outlets from over 70 countries have organized a protest on their front pages to highlight the killing of over 200 journalists over the past 22 months in Israel's war on Gaza, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced.
“At the rate at which journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli military, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed,” Thibaut Bruttin, the group’s director general, said in a statement on Monday.
The protest, also supported by the global Avaaz movement, was published on the websites of media outlets such as Al Jazeera, the British newspaper The Independent, the French newspapers La Croix and L'Humanite, as well as the German newspapers Tageszeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau, according to RSF.
Some 220 journalists have been killed during Israel's war in Gaza since it began on October 7, 2023, according to RSF data. An independent analysis by Al Jazeera reveals that at least 278 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel over the past 22 months, including 10 from the Al Jazeera network.
Monday's protest was organized a week after the killing of five journalists — Mohammad Salama of Al Jazeera, Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, freelance journalist Mariam Abu Daqqa working for The Associated Press, Ahmed Abu Aziz and Moaz Abu Taha — in two Israeli attacks on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, south of Gaza.
Earlier in August, six journalists, including Al Jazeera's Anas al-Sharif, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent housing media workers outside the main gate of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The attack targeted al-Sharif.
In total, seven people were killed in that attack, including three other Al Jazeera staff — correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, 25, and Mohammed Noufal, 29.
The RSF statement said that the protest participants "demand an end to impunity for Israeli crimes against Gaza journalists, the emergency evacuation of journalists seeking to leave the territory, and that the foreign press have independent access."
The media group announced that it has filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court for war crimes that the Israeli military allegedly committed against journalists in Gaza.
International media have been denied free access to the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
Several selected media outlets have had journalists stationed near Israeli military units operating in Gaza, under the condition of strict military censorship.
Al Jazeera
