– Zaina Aman
13 February 2024
On February 12th, tragedy struck as journalist Alaa Hassan Al-Hams, associated with Sanad Agency, succumbed to her injuries, as confirmed by both the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) and media reports. In early December, Alaa lost 11 members of her family in an Israeli airstrike. Al-Hams had been gravely wounded two weeks prior when her residence in the al-Geneina neighborhood of Rafah, located in the southern Gaza Strip, was struck by an Israeli airstrike.
Simultaneously, journalist Angham Ahmed Adwan, associated with the Libyan TV channel February, met a similar fate when his home in Jabalia city was hit by an Israeli airstrike on the same day.
In a social media update on platform X, Abdelsalam expressed his sympathies to the family of the deceased journalist, denouncing “the continuous Israeli attacks on Gaza” and reaffirming Yemen’s solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Previously, UN experts have strongly criticized the lethal assaults on journalists and media personnel within Gaza. In a statement issued on February 1, these experts characterized the conflict in Gaza as the “most perilous encounter for journalists in recent memory.” On Tuesday, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent and accompanying photojournalist sustained injuries in an Israeli airstrike close to Rafah, situated in southern Gaza. Gaza’s Government Media Office condemned the deliberate targeting of the Al Jazeera crew, marking the fifth such attack on the channel. It asserted that these assaults were aimed at intimidating journalists and obstructing media coverage of the military offensive in Gaza.
With this latest incident, the toll of journalists killed by Israel since the commencement of its aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7th has reached 126, as reported by the Palestinian News Agency (WAFA). Additionally, government figures indicate that 10 journalists have been detained by Israeli forces. These grim statistics underscore the perilous environment faced by journalists covering the conflict in Gaza and highlight the ongoing challenges to press freedom in the region.
